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The American
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
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Publisher's summary
Self-made American millionaire Christopher Newman arrives in Paris brimming with hope and optimism, excited to experience the culture and, hopefully, find the perfect woman to become his wife. After a chance encounter with American expatriate friends, his attention is drawn to Madame de Cintré, 25-year-old widowed daughter of the late Marquis de Bellegarde.
Having fallen on hard times, the centuries-old aristocratic family permits Newman's courtship to proceed; however, they later persuade the widow to break off her engagement to the nouveau-riche businessman. When Newman finds himself in possession of a dark secret that threatens to destroy the Bellegarde family, he must decide whether to keep to his principles or exact his revenge.
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Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
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Best Audible book ever
- By Molly-o on 12-25-11
By: George Eliot
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Agnes Grey
- By: Anne Bronte
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Written when women---and workers generally---had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid-19th-century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess.
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Make.it.stop.
- By Wayne on 03-18-22
By: Anne Bronte
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The Rise of Silas Lapham
- By: William Dean Howells
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Howells’ best-known work and a subtle classic of its time, The Rise of Silas Lapham is an elegant tale of Boston society and manners. After garnering a fortune in the paint business, Silas Lapham moves his family from their Vermont farm to the city of Boston in order to improve his social position. The consequences of this endeavor are both humorous and tragic as the greedy Silas brings his company to the brink of bankruptcy.
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Important for the Era
- By Brent on 03-19-23
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Agnes Grey
- By: Anne Brontë
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Having lost the family savings on risky investments, Richard Grey removes himself from family life and suffers a bout of depression. Feeling helpless and frustrated, his youngest daughter, Agnes, applies for a job as a governess to the children of a wealthy, upper-class, English family. Ecstatic at the thought that she has finally gained control and freedom over her own life, Agnes arrives at the Bloomfield mansion armed with confidence and purpose.
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Loved it
- By Kerry on 05-22-10
By: Anne Brontë
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Wives and Daughters
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 25 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centers on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new stepsister enters Molly's quiet life, the loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford.
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It's not about the ending!
- By Sandra on 07-25-05
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The Custom of the Country
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Edith Wharton stands among the finest writers of early 20th-century America. In The Custom of the Country, Wharton’s scathing social commentary is on full display through the beautiful and manipulative Undine Spragg. When Undine convinces her nouveau riche parents to move to New York, she quickly injects herself into high society. But even a well-to-do husband isn’t enough for Undine, whose overwhelming lust for wealth proves to be her undoing.
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Cannot recommend a better narrator!
- By Esther on 07-29-12
By: Edith Wharton
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Not an easy read but SO worth it!
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If you don't love this book, it's your fault
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A satire that turns tragic
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Couldn't get past the terrible American accents.
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The Ambassadors
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American Lambert Strether is sent to Paris on behalf of Mrs. Newsome, his fiancée, to collect her son, Chad. When Strether finds Chad, he discovers an altered man and becomes introduced to a free and unconventional style of life that soon intoxicates him. His views begin to change; the morality of Woollett, his hometown, becomes foreign, and the "ambassador" loses sight of his mission....
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Interesting but unfulfilling
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When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as "a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action". She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path.
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Bleak and believable
- By Karen on 04-26-09
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Milly Theale is a young, beautiful, and fabulously wealthy American. When she arrives in London and meets the equally beautiful but impoverished Kate Croy, they form an intimate friendship. But nothing is as it seems: materialism, romance, self-delusion, and ultimately fatal illness insidiously contaminate the glamorous social whirl.
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Not an easy read but SO worth it!
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Wealthy Maggie Verver has everything she could ever ask for - except a husband and a title. While in Italy, acquiring art for his museum back in the States, Maggie’s millionaire father, Adam, decides to remedy this and acquire a husband for Maggie. Enter Prince Amerigo, of a titled but now poor aristocratic Florentine family. Amerigo is the perfect candidate.
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If you don't love this book, it's your fault
- By Viewer on 09-14-18
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The Bostonians
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Taking place in Boston, Massachusetts, a decade after the Civil War, The Bostonians tells the story of two cousins who battle for the affections of and control over an enchanting prophetess. While visiting his cousin Olive Chancellor, a fierce feminist deeply involved in the Suffragette movement, Basil Ransom, a Confederate Civil War veteran turned lawyer, attends a speech by the talented young orator Verena Tarrant. Basil quickly falls in love with Verena, although he disagrees with her politics; Olive, however, sees her as the future of the women's rights movement.
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A satire that turns tragic
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Couldn't get past the terrible American accents.
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American Lambert Strether is sent to Paris on behalf of Mrs. Newsome, his fiancée, to collect her son, Chad. When Strether finds Chad, he discovers an altered man and becomes introduced to a free and unconventional style of life that soon intoxicates him. His views begin to change; the morality of Woollett, his hometown, becomes foreign, and the "ambassador" loses sight of his mission....
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Interesting but unfulfilling
- By Michael on 05-21-19
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When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as "a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action". She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path.
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Bleak and believable
- By Karen on 04-26-09
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Doctor Faustus
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Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.
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Washington Square (Blackstone Audio Edition)
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On New York City's Washington Square lives Catherine Sloper, a shy and plain-looking young woman who is tyrannized by her wealthy, overbearing father. When young Morris Townsend begins to court her, Dr. Sloper, distrusting his motives, threatens to disinherit Catherine. In accordance with her father's suspicions, young Townsend disappears, leaving Catherine to humiliation, heartache, and lonely spinsterhood.
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Fabulous
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Lambert Strether, a mild, middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs. Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure and to bring him home. But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman.
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Henry James can be hard to follow but worth it
- By Patricia on 01-29-13
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Roderick Hudson
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Roderick Hudson and Rowland Mallet are like two sides of the same coin: while the whimsical and egotistical Roderick recklessly follows his passions in the name of art, altruistic Rowland lives with restraint and measure. The two are bound together almost immediately when Rowland is shown a striking bronze statuette in his cousin's garden, which moves him to meet and support its creator, Roderick. They abandon their provincial New England lives for Rome, where the young sculptor perfects his craft and flourishes among Italy's great masters.
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The Europeans
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eugenia, an American expatriate brought up in Europe, arrives in rural New England with her charming brother Felix, hoping to find a wealthy second husband after the collapse of her marriage to a German prince. Their exotic, sophisticated airs cause quite a stir with their affluent, God-fearing American cousins, the Wentworth's - and provoke the disapproval of their uncle, suspicious of foreign influences.
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wonderful novel, wonderful reader, poor recording
- By Catherine on 11-14-09
By: Henry James
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The Portrait of a Lady
- By: Henry James
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy the freedom that her fortune has opened up and to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors, declaring that she will never marry. It is only when she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the cultivated but worthless Gilbert Osmond that she discovers that wealth is a two-edged sword.
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Highly recommended
- By David on 06-26-10
By: Henry James
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Portrait of a Lady
- By: Henry James
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- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-81 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James's most popular novels and is regarded by critics as one of his finest.
By: Henry James
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Daisy Miller
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- Unabridged
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Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? When she strikes up an intimate friendship with an urbane young Italian, her flat refusal to observe the codes of respectable behaviour leave her perilously exposed.
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loved the story
- By Dominick Garcez on 02-18-23
By: Henry James
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The Bostonians
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- Unabridged
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Story
From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of "the sisterhood of women". She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes, and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, veteran of the Civil War, with rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions?
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insightful and intricate portrayal of women from multiple perspectives in history of womens suffrage movement
- By Sharryn Bowman on 08-24-24
By: Henry James
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The Turn of the Screw
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Emma Thompson, Richard Armitage - introduction
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner Emma Thompson lends her immense talent and experienced voice to Henry James' Gothic ghost tale, The Turn of the Screw. When a governess is hired to care for two children at a British country estate, she begins to sense an otherworldly presence around the grounds. Are they really ghosts she's seeing? Or is something far more sinister at work?
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Great, but Mightn't be the Best on Audible
- By Gillian on 03-16-16
By: Henry James
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The Turn of the Screw
- By: Henry James
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- Unabridged
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The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly. In October 1898, it was collected in The Two Magics, published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London.
By: Henry James
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The Tragic Muse, Volume 1
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Victor Villar-Hauser
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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"You must paint her just like that... as the Tragic Muse," suggests one of James' characters to Nick Dormer, the young Englishman who, during the course of the novel, will courageously resist the glittering Parliamentary career desired for him by his family, in order to paint. His progress is counterpointed by the "Tragic Muse" of the title, Miriam Rooth, one of James' most fierily beautiful creations, a great actress indifferent to social reputation and triumphantly dedicated to her art.
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impossibly bad reader
- By Yao on 02-11-11
By: Henry James
What listeners say about The American
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- RMac
- 01-22-24
Classic Henry James
A thoroughly great book from beginning to end. I was surprised by the Victorian/Gothic component which is reminiscent of Wilkie Collins. Of course, James stay true to himself and his main character by artfully weaving the genres (and cultural elements) together to create one of his best novels.
A particular point of enjoyment was the secondary character of Mrs. Tristram. She's becomes the hero"s confidant. She is a rather bitter woman who is quite the pot-stirrer. Every novel needs one. A life of unfulfilled dreams makes her far from admirable; yet, after concluding the story, against my better nature, I found my own own wishes aligning with hers -but I wouldn't have changed the ending for the world!
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- Jacob Abernathy, III
- 06-27-23
Fantastic all around
Incredible writing, incredible performance.
And it says that I need 11 more words. Beep boop.
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- Simon Brodie
- 10-17-24
Best of James’s early novels
Midway through the novel this one becomes uncharacteristically melodramatic but then James resolves the story in his more usual manner. I loved it. Adam Sims, as others have commented, is an ideal narrator of James.
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- Will Able
- 07-16-23
A Feast for the Ears
A finely rendered portrait of a past age. While I was immersed in the audiobook, It was difficult to not annoy my friends with phrases of precise, pointed prose. The narration was excellent. The characters were given sufficiently distinct voices without being distracting or melodramatic.
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- Andorboth
- 12-03-22
excellent reading
Adam Sims needs to do more readings of Henry James. Excellent pacing by him, even if James's drama is somewhat standard for my taste.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Wendy Hall
- 08-20-24
Improves towards the end
Almost gave up on it out of finding it redundant in spite of liking some passages, but it improves after the engagement is called off by the family and the conflict ensues
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