
The Café with No Name
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $21.02
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Rob Jones
About this listen
A NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BEST-SELLER
A vibrant tale of love, companionship, and renewal set against the transformations of 1960s Vienna.
Summer 1966. Robert Simon is in his early thirties and has a dream. Raised in a home for war orphans, Robert has nonetheless grown into a warm-hearted, hard-working, and determined man. When the former owners of the corner café in the Carmelite market square shutter the business, Robert sees that the chance to realize his dream has arrived.
The place, dark and dilapidated, is in a poor neighborhood of the Austrian capital, but for some time now a new wind has been blowing, and the air is filled with an inexplicable energy and a desire for renewal. In the newspapers with which fishmongers wrap the char and trout from the Danube, one can read about great things to come, a bright future beginning to rise from the quagmire of the past. Enlivened by these promises, Robert refurbishes the café and, rewarding him for his efforts and search of a congenial place to gather, talk, read, or just sit and be, customers arrive, bringing their stories of passions, friendships, abandonments, and bereavements. Some are in search of company, others long for love, or just a place where they can feel understood. As the city is transformed, Robert’s café becomes at once a place of refuge and one from which to observe, mourn, and rejoice.
Combining the enchantment of warm prose with tender humor, Robert Seethaler has written a charming parable of human existence animated by unforgettable characters and a kaleidoscope of human stories.
©2025 Robert Seethaler (P)2025 Europa EditionsListeners also enjoyed...
-
A Whole Life
- A Novel
- By: Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins - translator
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood - his home. Set in the mid-20th century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.
-
-
Quiet Power
- By Mel on 04-08-17
By: Robert Seethaler, and others
-
The Usual Desire to Kill
- A Novel
- By: Camilla Barnes
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
About my worst listen in years
- By Dorothy on 06-27-25
By: Camilla Barnes
-
The Director
- By: Daniel Kehlmann
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark.
-
-
The sharpness of the story, utterly convincing characters, and the moral focus
- By hans sandberg on 06-13-25
By: Daniel Kehlmann
-
Theory & Practice
- By: Michelle de Kretser
- Narrated by: Melissa Madden Gray
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1986, and "beautiful, radical ideas" are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed relationship." They become lovers, and the narrator's feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf's diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray.
-
The Fact Checker
- By: Austin Kelley
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It started out like any other morning for the Fact Checker. The piece, “Mandeville/Green,” didn’t raise any red flags. There were more pressing stories that week—it being 2004 New York City and all. “Mandeville/Green” was a light, breezy look at a local farm called New Egypt, whose Ramapo tomatoes were quickly becoming the summer’s hottest produce. At first glance, the story seemed straightforward, but one line made the Fact Checker pause: a stray quote from a New Egypt volunteer named Sylvia making a cryptic reference to “nefarious business” at the farmer’s market.
-
-
Awful
- By O on 06-14-25
By: Austin Kelley
-
Kate & Frida
- A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Books
- By: Kim Fay
- Narrated by: Kelsey Jaffer, Ines del Castillo
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twentysomething Frida Rodriguez arrives in Paris in 1991, relishing the city’s butter-soaked cuisine and seeking her future as a war correspondent. But then she writes to a bookshop in Seattle, and receives more than just the book she requests. A friendship begins that will redefine the person she wants to become.
-
-
The perfect book to escape into.
- By Lili on 05-27-25
By: Kim Fay
-
A Whole Life
- A Novel
- By: Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins - translator
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood - his home. Set in the mid-20th century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.
-
-
Quiet Power
- By Mel on 04-08-17
By: Robert Seethaler, and others
-
The Usual Desire to Kill
- A Novel
- By: Camilla Barnes
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
About my worst listen in years
- By Dorothy on 06-27-25
By: Camilla Barnes
-
The Director
- By: Daniel Kehlmann
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark.
-
-
The sharpness of the story, utterly convincing characters, and the moral focus
- By hans sandberg on 06-13-25
By: Daniel Kehlmann
-
Theory & Practice
- By: Michelle de Kretser
- Narrated by: Melissa Madden Gray
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1986, and "beautiful, radical ideas" are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed relationship." They become lovers, and the narrator's feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf's diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray.
-
The Fact Checker
- By: Austin Kelley
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It started out like any other morning for the Fact Checker. The piece, “Mandeville/Green,” didn’t raise any red flags. There were more pressing stories that week—it being 2004 New York City and all. “Mandeville/Green” was a light, breezy look at a local farm called New Egypt, whose Ramapo tomatoes were quickly becoming the summer’s hottest produce. At first glance, the story seemed straightforward, but one line made the Fact Checker pause: a stray quote from a New Egypt volunteer named Sylvia making a cryptic reference to “nefarious business” at the farmer’s market.
-
-
Awful
- By O on 06-14-25
By: Austin Kelley
-
Kate & Frida
- A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Books
- By: Kim Fay
- Narrated by: Kelsey Jaffer, Ines del Castillo
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twentysomething Frida Rodriguez arrives in Paris in 1991, relishing the city’s butter-soaked cuisine and seeking her future as a war correspondent. But then she writes to a bookshop in Seattle, and receives more than just the book she requests. A friendship begins that will redefine the person she wants to become.
-
-
The perfect book to escape into.
- By Lili on 05-27-25
By: Kim Fay
-
Tilt
- A Novel
- By: Emma Pattee
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
-
-
Over enthusiastic, snarky narrator who can't...
- By NMwritergal on 03-27-25
By: Emma Pattee
-
I'll Be Right Here
- A Novel
- By: Amy Bloom
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Immigrating alone from Paris to New York after the crucible of World War II, young Gazala becomes friends with two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala’s lost, beloved brother, Samir, joins her in Manhattan, this contentious, inseparable foursome makes their way into the twenty-first century, becoming the beating heart of a multigenerational found family.
By: Amy Bloom
-
The Catch
- A Novel
- By: Yrsa Daley-Ward
- Narrated by: Yrsa Daley-Ward
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life.
-
-
Too obscure
- By marty reinhardt on 06-27-25
By: Yrsa Daley-Ward
-
The Doorman
- A Novel
- By: Chris Pavone
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York’s cultural elite. Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she’d quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can’t bring herself to leave him. Yet.
-
-
Awful
- By C39LDUTBFFFQ on 06-06-25
By: Chris Pavone
-
Run for the Hills
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Wilson
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than she imagined for herself, it’s mostly OK. Mostly. Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister.
-
-
Stunning!
- By Jennifer on 05-17-25
By: Kevin Wilson
-
Going Home
- A Novel
- By: Tom Lamont
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Going Home is a sparkling, funny, bighearted story of family and what happens when three men—all of whom are completely ill-suited for fatherhood—take charge of a toddler following an unexpected loss.
-
-
Great Story
- By E G Neufeld on 03-12-25
By: Tom Lamont
-
The Jackal's Mistress
- A Novel
- By: Chris Bohjalian
- Narrated by: Marni Penning, Chris Bohjalian
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
-
-
Just ok
- By Gwen on 03-20-25
By: Chris Bohjalian
-
King of Ashes
- A Novel
- By: S. A. Cosby
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.
-
-
True Noir
- By Steven Lifland on 06-22-25
By: S. A. Cosby
-
Flesh
- A Novel
- By: David Szalay
- Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.
-
-
Everything
- By Amazon Customer on 04-06-25
By: David Szalay
-
Flashlight
- A Novel
- By: Susan Choi
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past.
-
-
Excellent story & narration
- By Rachel on 06-28-25
By: Susan Choi
-
The Living Mountain
- By: Nan Shepherd
- Narrated by: Tilda Swinton, Robert Macfarlane, Jenny Odell
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now with a new introduction by Robert Macfarlane and a new afterword by Jenny Odell, this masterpiece of nature writing by Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into “the high and holy places” of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world of spectacular cliffs, deep silences, and lakes so clear that they cannot be imagined. As she walks through clouds, endures blizzards, and watches the great spirals of eagles in flight, Shepherd comes to know something about the hidden life of this remarkable landscape—and also herself.
By: Nan Shepherd
-
We Do Not Part
- A Novel
- By: Han Kang, E. Yaewon - translator, Paige Aniyah Morris - translator
- Narrated by: Greta Jung
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step.
-
-
Powerful, Tough Listen
- By ncnickle on 01-26-25
By: Han Kang, and others
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Mutual Interest
- By: Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents’ dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants—not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.
-
A Whole Life
- A Novel
- By: Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins - translator
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood - his home. Set in the mid-20th century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.
-
-
Quiet Power
- By Mel on 04-08-17
By: Robert Seethaler, and others
-
The Paris Express
- By: Emma Donoghue
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.
-
-
Outstanding narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 03-19-25
By: Emma Donoghue
-
The Tobacconist
- By: Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins, Charlotte Collins - translator
- Narrated by: Rupert Simonian
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz.
-
-
Simple horror
- By P. C. Jorgensen on 10-02-24
By: Robert Seethaler, and others
-
The Jackal's Mistress
- A Novel
- By: Chris Bohjalian
- Narrated by: Marni Penning, Chris Bohjalian
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
-
-
Just ok
- By Gwen on 03-20-25
By: Chris Bohjalian
-
Expect Great Things!
- How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women
- By: Vanda Krefft
- Narrated by: Eliza Foss
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday in the 1950 and '60s synonymous with supplying secretaries—always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves—to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girl” on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 90 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool.
-
-
Interesting women's "micro" history book!
- By NMwritergal on 03-07-25
By: Vanda Krefft
-
Mutual Interest
- By: Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents’ dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants—not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.
-
A Whole Life
- A Novel
- By: Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins - translator
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood - his home. Set in the mid-20th century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.
-
-
Quiet Power
- By Mel on 04-08-17
By: Robert Seethaler, and others
-
The Paris Express
- By: Emma Donoghue
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.
-
-
Outstanding narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 03-19-25
By: Emma Donoghue
-
The Tobacconist
- By: Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins, Charlotte Collins - translator
- Narrated by: Rupert Simonian
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz.
-
-
Simple horror
- By P. C. Jorgensen on 10-02-24
By: Robert Seethaler, and others
-
The Jackal's Mistress
- A Novel
- By: Chris Bohjalian
- Narrated by: Marni Penning, Chris Bohjalian
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
-
-
Just ok
- By Gwen on 03-20-25
By: Chris Bohjalian
-
Expect Great Things!
- How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women
- By: Vanda Krefft
- Narrated by: Eliza Foss
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday in the 1950 and '60s synonymous with supplying secretaries—always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves—to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girl” on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 90 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool.
-
-
Interesting women's "micro" history book!
- By NMwritergal on 03-07-25
By: Vanda Krefft
-
33 Place Brugmann
- A Novel
- By: Alice Austen
- Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio, Jilly Bond, Nicholas Boulton, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.
-
-
A wonderful book
- By iggynut on 04-12-25
By: Alice Austen
-
Wild Thing
- A Life of Paul Gauguin
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paul Gauguin's legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved.
-
-
Gauguin had a momentous life, Peru, Paris, Papeete.
- By Hawaiian 54 on 06-19-25
By: Sue Prideaux
-
Lion
- A Novel
- By: Sonya Walger
- Narrated by: Sonya Walger
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lion is about an unlikely parent, more legend than presence in his daughter's life. He is a charismatic, dashing bon-vivant, a polo player, race car driver, cocaine addict, ex-con, pilot, and sky-diver. Born in the aftershocks of Argentina's greatest earthquake, he is like a minor god who comes down to earth in a grand manner, falling in all the ways there are to fall.
-
-
Heartachingly beautiful
- By awaw on 05-16-25
By: Sonya Walger
-
Every Tom, Dick & Harry
- A Novel
- By: Elinor Lipman
- Narrated by: Piper Goodeve
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Taking over her parents’ estate-sale business is not the life’s work that Emma Lewis bargained for. Yes, she grew up helping them empty people’s nests, but nothing prepared her for her biggest and stickiest “get”—the grand, beautiful house of ill repute masquerading as a decidedly beddable B and B. Should Emma turn down potential clients in need of decluttering just because they are shady, escort-y, and proud of it?
-
-
Cute but predictable
- By Betsy H. on 03-07-25
By: Elinor Lipman
-
Whale Fall
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth O'Connor
- Narrated by: Dyfrig Morris, Gabrielle Glaister, Gwyneth Keyworth, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.
-
-
Excellent book for audible
- By Lilly on 01-01-25
-
Darkenbloom
- By: Eva Menasse, Charlotte Collins - translator
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1989, and in a small town on the Austria-Hungary border, nobody talks about the war; the older residents pretend not to remember, and the younger ones are too busy making plans to leave. The walls are thin, the curtains twitch, there is a face at every window, and everyone knows what they are not supposed to say. But as thousands of East German refugees mass at the border, it seems that the past is knocking on Darkenbloom's door. Still, though, nobody talks about the war. Until a mysterious visitor shows up asking questions.
-
-
Nothing. Even sped up I couldn’t stay interested in any of the characters.
- By Stephen Ruffin on 06-08-25
By: Eva Menasse, and others
-
The Dark Maestro
- A Novel
- By: Brendan Slocumb
- Narrated by: Ronald Peet
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Curtis Wilson is a cello prodigy, growing up in the Southeast D.C. projects with a drug dealer for a father. But through determination and talent, and the loving support of his father’s girlfriend, Larissa, Curtis claws his way out of his challenging circumstances and rises to unimagined heights in the classical music world—even soloing with the New York Philharmonic. And then, suddenly, his life disintegrates. His father, Zippy, turns state’s evidence, implicating his old bosses. Now the family—Curtis included—must enter the witness protection program if they want to survive.
-
-
Fun but seemed a bit preposterous at the end
- By Amazon Customer on 06-08-25
By: Brendan Slocumb
-
Red Dog Farm
- A Novel
- By: Nathaniel Ian Miller
- Narrated by: Olafur Darri Olafsson
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things: the cavorting of a newborn calf, the return of birdsong after a long winter, the steadfast love of a good (or tolerably good) farm dog. But the outer world still beckons, so Orri leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík.
-
-
So much animal death.
- By S. Nolte on 03-05-25
-
Gabriel's Moon
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: George Blagden
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a fire that took his mother’s life. Every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes of Europe in the grip of the Cold War. When he is offered the chance to interview Patrice Lumumba, newly elected president of the People’s Republic of the Congo, he finds himself drawn into a web of duplicities and betrayals.
-
-
One of the best Boyd storylines, but...
- By WKB on 12-19-24
By: William Boyd
-
The Impossible Thing
- By: Belinda Bauer
- Narrated by: Phil Dunster
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1926. On the cliffs of Yorkshire, men are lowered on ropes to steal the eggs of the sea birds who nest there. The most beautiful are sold for large sums. A small girl—penniless and neglected by her family—retrieves one such treasure. Its discovery will forever alter the course of her life. A century later. In a remote cottage in Wales, Patrick Fort finds his friend, Nick, and his mother tied up and robbed. The only thing missing: a carved case containing an incredible scarlet egg.
-
-
Such enjoyable listening
- By Claudia A. Pruitt on 04-27-25
By: Belinda Bauer
-
Kate & Frida
- A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Books
- By: Kim Fay
- Narrated by: Kelsey Jaffer, Ines del Castillo
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twentysomething Frida Rodriguez arrives in Paris in 1991, relishing the city’s butter-soaked cuisine and seeking her future as a war correspondent. But then she writes to a bookshop in Seattle, and receives more than just the book she requests. A friendship begins that will redefine the person she wants to become.
-
-
The perfect book to escape into.
- By Lili on 05-27-25
By: Kim Fay
-
The Antidote
- A Novel
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
-
-
1935 Nebraska Dustbowl drama with a Supernatural twist.
- By CarolynL on 03-16-25
By: Karen Russell