The Book of Speculation
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Narrated by:
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Johnny Carr
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By:
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Erika Swyler
About this listen
The Book of Speculation is Erika Swyler's gorgeous and moving debut, a wondrous novel about the power of books, family, and magic.
Simon Watson lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a travelling carnival and seldom calls.
On a day in late June, Simon receives a mysterious book from an antiquarian bookseller; it has been sent to him because it is inscribed with the name Verona Bonn, Simon's grandmother. The book tells the story of two doomed lovers who were part of a travelling circus more than 200 years ago. The paper crackles with age as Simon turns the yellowed pages filled with notes and sketches.
He is fascinated, yet as he reads Simon becomes increasingly unnerved. Why do so many women in his family drown on 24th July? And could Enola, who has suddenly turned up at home for the first time in years, risk the same terrible fate?
As 24th July draws ever closer, Simon must unlock the mysteries of the book and decode his family history before it's too late.
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Amazing
- By lisa on 12-31-19
By: Roz Nay
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The Wicked Deep
- By: Shea Ernshaw
- Narrated by: Casey Turner
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the cursed town of Sparrow...where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles, and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town. Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under.
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can't keep my attention. I tried to like it.
- By HARRIS' on 04-10-18
By: Shea Ernshaw
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Surfacing
- By: Shana Norris
- Narrated by: Amanda Ronconi
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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16-year-old Mara Westray has just lost her mother, and now, being shipped off to live with the father she doesn’t know is not how she imagined grieving. She's already counting down the days until she turns 18 and can leave the tiny island of Swans Landing. But from the moment she steps off the ferry, nothing is as ordinary as it looks. As she tries to unravel the events that led to her mom fleeing the island 16 years ago, Mara finds that the biggest secret of all is only the beginning.
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A Good Listen.
- By Karen Russell on 02-28-16
By: Shana Norris
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The Arsonist
- By: Stephanie Oakes
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi, Morgan Hallett, Rachel Botchan
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In this offering from Morris Award finalist Stephanie Oakes, three riveting points of view are woven together in a story that's part historical mystery, part contemporary coming-of-age, and completely unputdownable. When Molly gets a package leading her to Pepper, they're tasked with solving a decades-old mystery: find out who killed Ava back in 1989. Using Ava's diary for clues, Molly and Pepper realize there's more to her life - and death - than meets the eye. Someone is lying to them. And someone out there is guiding them along, desperate for answers.
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Thrilling with wonderful characters
- By Emily Schneider on 11-29-20
By: Stephanie Oakes
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Bleeding Violet
- By: Dia Reeves
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna's tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home. But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. She discovers secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she's far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen, and no one is safe.
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Didn't like it. Sorry, not sorry
- By Cii'Em on 02-15-16
By: Dia Reeves
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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
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Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
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Southern Gods
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Eric G Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio statio - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.
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Big, Bold and Bright
- By John on 08-23-11
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Now & Then
- By: Jacqueline Sheehan
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna O’Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she’s trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them. Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.
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Loved This Book
- By Janina on 03-07-17
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The Secrets She Carried
- By: Barbara Davis
- Narrated by: Tiffany Morgan
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Though Peak Plantation has been in her family for generations, Leslie Nichols can't wait to rid herself of the farm left to her by her estranged grandmother Maggie. But Leslie isn't the only one with a claim to Peak. Jay Davenport, Peak's reclusive caretaker, has his own reasons for holding onto the land bequeathed to him by Leslie's grandmother. Before she died, Maggie hinted at a terrible secret surrounding Adele Laveau, a lady's maid who came to Peak during the 1930s and died under mysterious circumstances.
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Best book of the year
- By Joanne Tailele on 10-08-18
By: Barbara Davis
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Because You Love to Hate Me
- 13 Tales of Villainy
- By: Ameriie - editor
- Narrated by: Ameriie, Kevin T. Collins, Julia Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unique YA anthology, 13 acclaimed, best-selling authors team up with 13 influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like Medusa, Sherlock Holmes, and 'Jack and the Beanstalk' provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage - and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again!
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I enjoyed more than I expected
- By Doha on 08-30-17
By: Ameriie - editor
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The Disappearances
- By: Emily Bain Murphy
- Narrated by: Devon Sorvari
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Aila Quinn's mother, Juliet, has always been a mystery. Vibrant yet guarded, she keeps her secrets beyond Aila's reach. When Juliet dies, Aila and her younger brother, Miles, are sent to live in Sterling, a rural town with mysteries of its own. In Sterling, the experiences that weave life together - scents of flowers and food, reflections from mirrors and lakes, even the ability to dream - vanish every seven years. No one knows what causes these Disappearances or what will slip away next.
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Always
- By Lisa Gay on 09-09-17
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Grim
- By: Ellen Hopkins, Julie Kagawa, Amanda Hocking, and others
- Narrated by: Christine Johnson
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today: Ellen Hopkins, Amanda Hocking, Julie Kagawa, Claudia Gray, Rachel Hawkins, Kimberly Derting, Myra McEntire, Malinda Lo, Sarah Rees-Brennan, Jackson Pearce, Christine Johnson, Jeri Smith Ready, Shaun David Hutchinson, Saundra Mitchell, Sonia Gensler, Tessa Gratton, Jon Skrovron.
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amazing
- By Anonymous User on 10-04-17
By: Ellen Hopkins, and others
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The Beach Trees
- By: Karen White
- Narrated by: Ki Gottberg, Gin Hammond
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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For Julie Holt, travelling to the beautiful but ravaged coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, is a journey into a secret past, and a life she never expected.... Julie first knew loss at the age of 12, when her sister disappeared, never to be found. As her once close-knit family grew apart, Julie's mother obsessively searched for the girl, and when her mother died, Julie took up the search, never letting go of the hope. Then, at an art exhibition in New York, she meets Monica....
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The ending was very weak
- By Missi Boyd on 10-31-16
By: Karen White