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The Eighth Life
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 40 hrs and 56 mins
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Publisher's summary
At the start of the 20th century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste....
Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the center of the Russian Revolution in St. Petersburg. Stasia’s is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.
Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. A ballet dancer never makes it to Paris and a singer pines for Vienna. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes, and shakes some more, and the listener rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends.
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Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
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Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
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Two Crosses
- Secrets of the Cross, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth Musser
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The glimmering Huguenot cross she so innocently wears leads her deep into the shadows. When Gabriella Madison arrives in the French village of Castelnau in 1961 to continue her university studies, she doesn’t anticipate being drawn into the secretive world behind the Algerian war for independence from France. And the further she delves into the war efforts, the more her faith is challenged. The people who surround her bring a whirlwind of transforming forces.
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Faith, Romance, Spies, and Fascinating History
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-19
By: Elizabeth Musser
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City of Girls
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
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A strong story
- By Anita Kristensen on 06-08-19
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The Museum of Innocence
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (translator)
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
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one of the very best I've ever heard
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 03-06-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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The Love Note
- By: Tracy Rees
- Narrated by: Jasmine Blackborow
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Perfect for fans of The Keeper of Lost Things and The Villa in Italy. Blue lives a charmed life. From her family's townhouse in Richmond, she lives a life of luxury and couldn't want for anything - well, on the surface at least. Then, on the night of her 21st birthday, her father makes a startling toast: he will give his daughter's hand to whichever man can capture her heart best in the form of a love letter. But Blue has other ideas, and, unwilling to play at her father's bewildering games, she sets out on her own path to find her own destiny....
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The Love Note❣️
- By Leslie Gail Mnich on 10-25-20
By: Tracy Rees
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The War Nurses: A Moving Wartime Romance Saga Full of Heart
- The War Nurses Series
- By: Lizzie Page
- Narrated by: Marian Hussey
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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You will love every moment of this absolutely brilliant wartime saga, perfect for fans of Diney Costeloe, Soraya M. Lane, and Nadine Dorries. As war takes its toll, the love and care of two brave young nurses become everything to the wounded soldiers they tend... 1914. Two plucky young nurses pledge to help the war effort: Mairi, a wholesome idealist hoping to leave behind her past and Elsie, a glamorous single mother with a weakness for handsome soldiers. Despite their differences, the pair become firm friends.
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I really really wanted to like this book...
- By Teresa M. Thornborough on 09-26-19
By: Lizzie Page
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The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
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Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
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The Godmothers
- A Novel
- By: Camille Aubray
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Meet the Godmothers: Filomena is a clever and resourceful war refugee with a childhood secret, who comes to America to wed Mario, the family's favored son. Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls' home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family's only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.
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Easy Enjoyable Read
- By Bunny on 06-23-21
By: Camille Aubray
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Daughter of Fortune
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.
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An adventure to the California Gold Fields of 1849
- By Jean on 07-20-20
By: Isabel Allende
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The Shadow Lines
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Raj Varma
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, Ghosh’s radiant second novel follows two families - one English, one Bengali - as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian-born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.
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Narrator Doesn't Know How to Pronounce
- By Amazon Customer on 08-27-11
By: Amitav Ghosh
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Jenny
- By: Sigrid Undset
- Narrated by: K. G. Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jenny is the story of Jenny Winge, a talented Norwegian painter who lives a free and independent life in Rome. Betraying her own ideals, she has an affair, resulting in a child out of wedlock, and decides to raise the child on her own. Undset gives a gripping portrayal of a woman struggling towards fulfillment and independence, who at the same time wrestles with mental problems. It is written with unflinching honesty, which makes her story as compelling today as it was nearly a century ago.
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Undset is an Astute Observer of Human Nature
- By Amazon Customer on 08-05-17
By: Sigrid Undset
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The Women of Chateau Lafayette
- By: Stephanie Dray
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert, Emma Bering, Rachel L. Jacobs
- Length: 23 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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An epic saga from New York Times best-selling author Stephanie Dray based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy.
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An absolute masterpiece of a book!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-15-21
By: Stephanie Dray
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Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish.
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WOW! What a great story and narration!
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An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
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When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies.
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Monotone delivery
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Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
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A Brief History of Seven Killings
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Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
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A Tough Read
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What listeners say about The Eighth Life
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- Whesty
- 10-11-22
S Very good read
It’s taken me months to get thru this book the story line is very good but too detailed
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- Karolina K.
- 07-23-21
Amazing novel, ok narration, and mispronounced names and places
An amazing, very engaging “war and peace” type of a novel, written from the perspective of Soviet periphery. Living in Georgia, i loved imagining the story unfold in different corners of this charismatic country. On the other hand, i was shocked and very annoyed that the producers did not bother verifying the pronunciation of so many key names used repeatedly in the text - very disturbing. Giorgi, Cheburashka, Vake,.. all these terms are butchered over and over again in a way that would anger the author i imagine, and very much annoys the aware listener. Still very highly recommended, but if you know Georgia or Georgian language, be prepared!
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3 people found this helpful
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- may
- 09-13-22
Great story, good performance
Absolute loved the story and really enjoyed most aspects of the audiobook performance. The dramatic interpretation was spot on for me (despite some inconsistencies in rendering character’s accents), but I really wished the performer/director would have learned how to pronounce the many famous names and foreign loan words that appeared throughout the text. The names—especially those of famous Russian authors and musicians—were really butchered, but this will only bother the listener if they know the correct pronunciation and /or care about how you say Alla Pugachëva, kolkhoz, etc.
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- jane west
- 01-20-23
The eight life
An unbelievable story , so filled with emotion , history and a love of chocolate, no words can really tell what an extraordinary take this is a definite read , I loved it . Great narration !!
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- Simone
- 11-02-21
Amazing book
I loved this book. The narrator she was amazing. The story is incredible. I definitely recommend this book
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- L. Miller
- 05-01-22
wow!!
Makes me wish I knew more about Eastern European history. I realize how American-centric my schooling was. A beautiful story.
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1 person found this helpful
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- The Justini
- 01-02-24
A solid 4.5 stars
Long meandering book, sweeping epic, full of tragedy and trauma, yet compelling and human.
Found the narrator did an outstanding job of managing different voices and characters.
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- Tina Briskin
- 01-16-23
An amazing tale of love and life
I know this book is very long, and I know it’s events take place mostly in the country of Georgia, on the Black Sea, which may sound foreign to some. Nevertheless, do yourself a favor and read it. It has been a very long time since I heard a voice so bright, a word so honest and an emotion so sincere.
5 generations of the Yoshi family live through the entire last century. So, it is both education and informational and most of all, it pulls the heart’s strings. The book is very well written - I could not put it down!
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-29-21
Great Historical Fiction about Georgia and the Soviet Union
I am about a third of the way through this book.
It is extremely well written.
I am familiar with the history and this historical fiction is very accurate.
There is an amazing scene of the NKVD investigating Georgian nationalists.
This book is so all encompassing.
It has Georgian history.
It has the 1917 revolution.
It has World War 2.
All in the first 1/3 of the book.
And the characters are well developed and you quickly come to care about them.
One of the best books I have purchased on Audible in a long time.
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- MARS
- 10-19-21
Eight Generations, History, and Chocolate
Laced throughout this book is a description of a remarkable substance—a special blend of chocolate—rationed out in baked goods it provides the taster with a state of bliss like none they have ever had. But as with most things in life that are this potent, there is a limit, different for each person, that will bring a bitter taste of despair, tragedy, and fear.
Therefore, the original “chocolatier” cautioned a person in each generation never to use it full strength but, as a most precious spice, only to flavor a dish. It is handed down to each generation. This family saga covers eight generations who learn the balance of good and evil. Over the next 107 years, you follow their journey while the history of some of the bloodiest events in history play out.
To write a summary of this becomes a saga in itself. I will leave this to the other reviewers and here talk about how I was affected by the book. I fell into this book and it swept past before I knew it—all 944 pages of it. There is a strong sense of place and time with fully developed characters that you care about from the very beginning and a history of a very specific country. The end of the book was perfect. So I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys family drama, historical fiction, and chocolate…
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2 people found this helpful