
The Beautiful Bureaucrat
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Dina Pearlman
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By:
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Helen Phillips
About this listen
A young wife's new job pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this dazzling first novel Ursula K. Le Guin hails as "funny, sad, scary, beautiful. I love it."
In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings - the office's scarred, pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echo eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband, Joseph, disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread. As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder - luminous and new.
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Story
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D, which Arctor takes in massive doses, gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.
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Drugs are bad
- By Randall on 04-25-09
By: Philip K. Dick
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The Drowning
- By: Nidhi Upadhyay
- Narrated by: Pallavi Bharti
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Shattered by the loss of her twins, software engineer Viji becomes the prime suspect in a chilling crime—the drowning of her best friend Neha’s baby. ASP Kanika, haunted by her own personal loss, is pulled into an investigation that quickly spirals into a nightmarish descent. Viji's eerie silence only deepens the enigma, and as Kanika digs further, her instincts sense something far more sinister lurking beneath the surface. The evidence hints at Viji’s involvement in black magic to resurrect her twins, but the scene defies logic.
By: Nidhi Upadhyay
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A Short Stay in Hell
- By: Steven L. Peck
- Narrated by: Sergei Burbank
- Length: 2 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he'll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life. In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity.
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Beautifully unsettling
- By Ryan on 08-23-14
By: Steven L. Peck
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Eat, Slay, Love
- A Novel
- By: Julie Mae Cohen
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett, Katherine Press, Rebecca Norfolk
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina gave up her career as a chef to raise her children, but her divorce has left her harried, lonely, and the black sheep of her family. It’s also left her in dire financial straits. Opal is a post-menopausal fitness guru who spends her days chasing likes and followers in an industry that worships youth. Even her glossy online persona can’t mask her checkered past. Lilah is a shy and optimistic librarian who spends her days tending to the stacks, until she wins an unbelievable sum in the lottery. With a growing bank account and a dashing fiancé, life seems too good to be true.
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Baffled
- By Sherie Porter on 04-10-25
By: Julie Mae Cohen
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Area X
- The Southern Reach Trilogy - Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance
- By: Jeff VanderMeer
- Narrated by: Carolyn McCormick, Bronson Pinchot, Xe Sands
- Length: 26 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Dive into the mysteries of Area X, a remote and lush terrain that has inexplicably sequestered itself from civilization. Twelve expeditions have gone in, and not a single member of any of them has remained unchanged by the experience - for better or worse.
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Book 1: intriguing! Book 2: Zzzz. Book 3: WTF!
- By KR on 02-03-15
By: Jeff VanderMeer
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The Usual Desire to Kill
- A Novel
- By: Camilla Barnes
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.
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Excellent, subtle humor and heartbreaking family dynamics.
- By Eileen Clark-Nagaoka on 04-23-25
By: Camilla Barnes
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Parasol Against the Axe
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Dorje Swallow
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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For reasons of her own, Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation she was half expected to decline, and finds herself in Prague on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie. Little does she know she’s arrived in a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting. A book Hero has brought with her seems to be warping her mind: the text changes depending on when it’s being listened to and who’s doing the listening, revealing startling new stories of fictional Praguers past and present.
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A surrealist chocolate box of delights
- By Roxanne Abeln-Taylor on 02-20-25
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Fallen Mountains
- By: Kimi Cunningham Grant
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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When Transom Shultz goes missing shortly after returning to his sleepy hometown of Fallen Mountains, Pennsylvania, his secrets are not the only secrets that threaten to emerge. Red, the sheriff, is haunted by the possibility that a crime Transom was involved in 17 years earlier - a crime Red secretly helped cover up - may somehow be linked to his disappearance.
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Solid story
- By RueRue on 04-10-19
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The Last Session
- A Novel
- By: Julia Bartz
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Allyson Ryan
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Writing Retreat, a white-knuckled locked-room thriller about a social worker who, after coming face-to-face with her dark past, must infiltrate a mysterious wellness center in the deserts of New Mexico.
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So fun!
- By ACV on 04-09-25
By: Julia Bartz
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The Wrong Unit
- A Novel
- By: Rob Dircks
- Narrated by: Rob Dircks
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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I don't know what the humans are so cranky about. Their enclosures are large, they ingest over 1,000 calories per day, and they're allowed to mate. Plus, they have me: an Autonomous Servile Unit, housed in a mobile/bipedal chassis. I do my job well: keep the humans healthy and happy.
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Futuristic journey without a single misstep
- By Julie W. Capell on 10-03-16
By: Rob Dircks
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A Madness of Sunshine
- By: Nalini Singh
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates. That is until one fateful summer - and several vanished bodies - shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement to not look back. But they can’t run from the past forever. Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace.
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Very Different
- By K on 12-08-19
By: Nalini Singh
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All Her Little Secrets
- A Novel
- By: Wanda M. Morris
- Narrated by: Susan Dalian
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a “for fun” relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her White boss. But everything changes one cold January morning when Ellice arrives in the executive suite and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head.
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Could barely finish this book
- By Boston Book Obsessed on 11-08-21
By: Wanda M. Morris
What listeners say about The Beautiful Bureaucrat
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- vurnt22
- 04-29-16
Helen Philips is Kafka strolling through Night Vale
Impeccable dissection of the silent horror of forms, filing, collating, & redacting. Dina Pearlman is PERFECT.
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- Natalie
- 09-12-22
Difficult to follow at times
Great narration. Interesting story but soffits follow at times. I kept waiting for something to happen. Is all happens in the last 30 mins. But a good twist - definitely not what I was expecting.
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- RueRue
- 09-15-15
Bizarre
Just too bizarre ! Not sure what this was supposed to mean, although the last line of the story was revealing. This was really weird.
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- Cynthia
- 10-11-15
Not much to it.
This is a dull story about a dull future where not much happens. Immediate reaction after slogging through it is -- really? That's it??? Can't believe I spent this many hours listening only to have the big reveal be something that was pretty obvious from the get-go and not all that interesting.
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