
The Expatriates
A Novel
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

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Ann Marie Lee
-
By:
-
Janice Y. K. Lee
About this listen
Janice Y. K. Lee’s New York Times best-selling debut, The Piano Teacher, was called “immensely satisfying” by People, “intensely readable” by O, The Oprah Magazine, and “a rare and exquisite story” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Now, in her long-awaited new novel, Lee explores with devastating poignancy the emotions, identities, and relationships of three very different American women living in the same small expat community in Hong Kong.
Mercy, a young Korean American and recent Columbia graduate, is adrift, undone by a terrible incident in her recent past. Hilary, a wealthy housewife, is haunted by her struggle to have a child, something she believes could save her foundering marriage. Meanwhile, Margaret, once a happily married mother of three, questions her maternal identity in the wake of a shattering loss. As each woman struggles with her own demons, their lives collide in ways that have irreversible consequences for them all. Atmospheric, moving, and utterly compelling, The Expatriates confirms Lee as an exceptional talent and one of our keenest observers of women’s inner lives.
©2016 Janice Y. K. Lee (P)2016 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Ghosted
- A Novel
- By: Rosie Walsh
- Narrated by: Katherine Press
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sarah meets Eddie, they connect instantly and fall in love. To Sarah, it seems as though her life has finally begun. And it's mutual: It's as though Eddie has been waiting for her, too. Sarah has never been so certain of anything. So when Eddie leaves for a long-booked vacation and promises to call from the airport, she has no cause to doubt him. But he doesn't call. Sarah's friends tell her to forget about him, but she can't. She knows something's happened - there must be an explanation.
-
-
Boring, tedious, not worth my time. I am so aggravated that I preordered this book. It was absurd. Much ado about nothing!
- By Pamela M. on 07-28-18
By: Rosie Walsh
-
The House of Broken Angels
- By: Luis Alberto Urrea
- Narrated by: Luis Alberto Urrea
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.
-
-
Not death, and Not borders
- By JKC on 05-01-18
-
Max
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: Christopher Kipiniak
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The inspiring story of Max Britsky, who grew up in the slums of New York and became one of the most powerful men in the American movie industry. Max tells the story of the rise of Max Britsky, entwined with the film industry’s beginnings near the turn of the twentieth century. When he was twelve, Max's father died, leaving him to scrape out a living in Manhattan's Lower East Side slums to provide for his mother and siblings. But Max was a natural entrepreneur, and he followed his business instincts and love of the theater to become one of the first film moguls in the history of American moviemaking.
By: Howard Fast
-
North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
-
-
An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
-
Absolution
- A Novel
- By: Alice McDermott
- Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky, Rachel Kenney
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
-
-
The narration was brilliant…totally engrossing and beautifully spoken
- By Karen Lausa on 12-13-23
By: Alice McDermott
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Ghosted
- A Novel
- By: Rosie Walsh
- Narrated by: Katherine Press
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sarah meets Eddie, they connect instantly and fall in love. To Sarah, it seems as though her life has finally begun. And it's mutual: It's as though Eddie has been waiting for her, too. Sarah has never been so certain of anything. So when Eddie leaves for a long-booked vacation and promises to call from the airport, she has no cause to doubt him. But he doesn't call. Sarah's friends tell her to forget about him, but she can't. She knows something's happened - there must be an explanation.
-
-
Boring, tedious, not worth my time. I am so aggravated that I preordered this book. It was absurd. Much ado about nothing!
- By Pamela M. on 07-28-18
By: Rosie Walsh
-
The House of Broken Angels
- By: Luis Alberto Urrea
- Narrated by: Luis Alberto Urrea
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.
-
-
Not death, and Not borders
- By JKC on 05-01-18
-
Max
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: Christopher Kipiniak
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The inspiring story of Max Britsky, who grew up in the slums of New York and became one of the most powerful men in the American movie industry. Max tells the story of the rise of Max Britsky, entwined with the film industry’s beginnings near the turn of the twentieth century. When he was twelve, Max's father died, leaving him to scrape out a living in Manhattan's Lower East Side slums to provide for his mother and siblings. But Max was a natural entrepreneur, and he followed his business instincts and love of the theater to become one of the first film moguls in the history of American moviemaking.
By: Howard Fast
-
North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
-
-
An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
-
Absolution
- A Novel
- By: Alice McDermott
- Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky, Rachel Kenney
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
-
-
The narration was brilliant…totally engrossing and beautifully spoken
- By Karen Lausa on 12-13-23
By: Alice McDermott
-
Lost and Found in Paris
- A Novel
- By: Lian Dolan
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joan Blakely had an unconventional childhood: the daughter of a globe-trotting supermodel and a world-famous artist. Her artist father died on 9/11, and Joan—an art historian by training—has spent more than a decade maintaining his legacy. Life in the art world is beginning to wear on her—and then one fateful afternoon her husband drops a bombshell: he’s fathered twins with another woman.
-
-
From the Mixed-Up Tales of Joan
- By Kay Woodbarry on 04-12-22
By: Lian Dolan
-
This Other Eden
- By: Paul Harding
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.
-
-
Painfully overwritten
- By WPH on 02-24-23
By: Paul Harding
-
The Echo of Old Books
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Davis
- Narrated by: Vanessa Johansson, Steve West, Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer’s affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners—an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance.
-
-
Couldn’t finish it
- By Lady Chaps on 03-31-23
By: Barbara Davis
-
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
- By: Kelly Harms
- Narrated by: Amy McFadden
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City. Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and - with a little encouragement from her friends - a few blind dates.
-
-
Enjoyable narration. Story is an easy read.
- By Em Jay Reads on 07-18-19
By: Kelly Harms
-
A Summer Affair
- A Novel
- By: Elin Hilderbrand
- Narrated by: Isabel Keating
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Claire has a problem with setting limits. All her life she has taken on every responsibility, assumed every burden, granted every request. Claire wants it all—and in the eyes of her friends, she has it: a devoted husband, four beautiful children, even a successful career as an artist. So when she agrees to chair the committee for Nantucket's social event of the year, she knows she can handle it. Claire can handle anything. But when planning the gala propels her into the orbit of billionaire Lock Dixon, unexpected sparks begin to fly.
-
-
a long winded affair
- By Monika Brohamer on 08-19-08
By: Elin Hilderbrand
-
Beasts of a Little Land
- A Novel
- By: Juhea Kim
- Narrated by: Sue Jean Kim, Raymond Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected — and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century.
-
-
PDF support needed
- By Ann L on 01-06-22
By: Juhea Kim
-
Before the Coffee Gets Cold: A Toshikazu Kawaguchi Book Set
- By: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Narrated by: Arina Ii, Kevin Shen
- Length: 18 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would you do if you could travel back in time? Discover the internationally bestselling novels of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, now a worldwide phenomenon and BookTok sensation, in this special new book set. Step inside Tokyo’s whimsical Café Funiculi Funicula and travel back in time with a cast of unforgettable characters.
-
-
very profound, lost in translation?
- By Ashlyn C. on 10-06-23
-
The Hotel Nantucket
- By: Elin Hilderbrand
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fresh off a bad breakup with a longtime boyfriend, Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton is desperately seeking a second act. When she’s named the new general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, a once Gilded Age gem turned abandoned eyesore, she hopes that her local expertise and charismatic staff can win the favor of their new London billionaire owner, Xavier Darling, as well as that of Shelly Carpenter, the wildly popular Instagram tastemaker who can help put them back on the map.
-
-
pre-read suggestions!!
- By Marie P on 06-22-22
By: Elin Hilderbrand
-
The Husband's Secret
- By: Liane Moriarty
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret - something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive....
-
-
Soap Opera Digest
- By FanB14 on 02-06-14
By: Liane Moriarty
-
The Women in the Castle
- By: Jessica Shattuck
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times notable book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
-
-
Skating On The Thin Ice Of Life
- By Sara on 04-29-17
By: Jessica Shattuck
-
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
- A Novel
- By: Jamie Ford
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's stunning debut, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.
-
-
Engaging and Lovely. Highly recommend.
- By Robert on 02-06-09
By: Jamie Ford
-
The Cider House Rules
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 24 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of America's most beloved and respected writers comes the classic story of Homer Wells, an orphan, and Wilbur Larch, a doctor without children of his own, who develop an extraordinary bond with one another.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 07-02-07
By: John Irving
Critic reviews
"Raise a glass: The first great book-club novel of 2016 has arrived.” (USA Today, 4/4 stars)
“A female, funny Henry James in Asia, Janice Y. K. Lee is vividly good on the subject of Americans abroad.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“Sex and the City meets Lost in Translation.” (The Skimm)
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Greenwood
- A Novel
- By: Michael Christie
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.
-
-
tedious boring trite
- By Marc Buchalter on 11-19-21
By: Michael Christie
-
The Sunshine Sisters
- By: Jane Green
- Narrated by: Jane Green
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters. As soon as possible, tomboy Nell fled her mother's overbearing presence to work on a farm and find her own way in the world as a single mother. The target of her mother's criticism, Meredith never felt good enough, thin enough, pretty enough. Her life took her to London - and into the arms of a man whom she may not even love.
-
-
I couldn't do it
- By Josie on 06-23-17
By: Jane Green
-
The Rich People Have Gone Away
- A Novel
- By: Regina Porter
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt, Shayna Small
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.
-
-
descriptions of food
- By Lilly Daniel on 08-16-24
By: Regina Porter
-
A Thousand Times Before
- A Novel
- By: Asha Thanki
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her. Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past.
-
-
The performance was an unpleasant listen for me.
- By Ms. Esq. on 03-10-25
By: Asha Thanki
-
The Dollhouse
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Enter the lush world of 1950s New York City, where a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors live side by side in the glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success in this debut novel from the New York Times best-selling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue. When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency hall mates aren't: Plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesn't belong.
-
-
Lifetime Movie in Book Form
- By chelsie on 08-30-16
By: Fiona Davis
-
The Roanoke Girls
- A Novel
- By: Amy Engel
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran...fast and far away. Eleven years later Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run, too? Or something worse?
-
-
Ick, ugh, yuck! Spoilers ahead!
- By NMwritergal on 03-12-17
By: Amy Engel
-
Greenwood
- A Novel
- By: Michael Christie
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.
-
-
tedious boring trite
- By Marc Buchalter on 11-19-21
By: Michael Christie
-
The Sunshine Sisters
- By: Jane Green
- Narrated by: Jane Green
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters. As soon as possible, tomboy Nell fled her mother's overbearing presence to work on a farm and find her own way in the world as a single mother. The target of her mother's criticism, Meredith never felt good enough, thin enough, pretty enough. Her life took her to London - and into the arms of a man whom she may not even love.
-
-
I couldn't do it
- By Josie on 06-23-17
By: Jane Green
-
The Rich People Have Gone Away
- A Novel
- By: Regina Porter
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt, Shayna Small
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.
-
-
descriptions of food
- By Lilly Daniel on 08-16-24
By: Regina Porter
-
A Thousand Times Before
- A Novel
- By: Asha Thanki
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her. Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past.
-
-
The performance was an unpleasant listen for me.
- By Ms. Esq. on 03-10-25
By: Asha Thanki
-
The Dollhouse
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Enter the lush world of 1950s New York City, where a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors live side by side in the glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success in this debut novel from the New York Times best-selling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue. When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency hall mates aren't: Plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesn't belong.
-
-
Lifetime Movie in Book Form
- By chelsie on 08-30-16
By: Fiona Davis
-
The Roanoke Girls
- A Novel
- By: Amy Engel
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran...fast and far away. Eleven years later Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run, too? Or something worse?
-
-
Ick, ugh, yuck! Spoilers ahead!
- By NMwritergal on 03-12-17
By: Amy Engel
-
The Immortalists
- By: Chloe Benjamin
- Narrated by: Maggie Hoffman
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children - four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness - sneak out to hear their fortunes, A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
-
-
Warning to animal lovers
- By Sarah on 02-02-18
By: Chloe Benjamin
-
Peggy
- A Novel
- By: Rebecca Godfrey, Leslie Jamison
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Leslie Jamison
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Venice, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and now legendary art collector, sits in the sun at her white marble palazzo on the Grand Canal. She’s in a reflective mood, thinking back on her thrilling, tragic, nearly impossible journey from her sheltered, old-fashioned family in New York to here: iconoclast and independent woman. Rebecca Godfrey’s Peggy is a blazingly fresh interpretation of a woman who defies every expectation to become an original. The daughter of two Jewish dynasties, Peggy finds her cloistered life turned upside down at fourteen, when her beloved father perishes on the Titanic.
-
-
Unfortunate listening experience
- By Brenda D'Andre on 12-27-24
By: Rebecca Godfrey, and others
-
A Dress of Violet Taffeta
- By: Tessa Arlen
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucy Duff Gordon knows she is talented. She sees color, light, and texture in ways few people can begin to imagine. But is the male dominated world of haute couture, who would use her art for their own gain, ready for her? When she is deserted by her wealthy husband, Lucy is left penniless with an aging mother and her five-year-old daughter to support. Desperate to survive, Lucy turns to her one true talent to make a living. A
-
-
love the narrator
- By Bird Miller on 09-22-22
By: Tessa Arlen
-
The House Is on Fire
- By: Rachel Beanland
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Andi Arndt, Michael Crouch, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Richmond, Virginia 1811. It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the journey to the capital. On the night after Christmas, the city's only theater is packed with holiday revelers. In the middle of a performance, the theater goes up in flames. Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.
-
-
I learned a lot
- By Jane Perkins on 04-24-23
By: Rachel Beanland
-
Trespasses
- A Novel
- By: Louise Kennedy
- Narrated by: Brid Brennan
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment—Michael is not only Protestant but older and married—Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites.
-
-
Exquisite
- By Suzanna on 11-10-22
By: Louise Kennedy
-
The Chicken Sisters
- By: KJ Dell'Antonia
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Merinac, Kansas, Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Frannie's have spent a century vying to serve up the best fried chicken in the state - and the legendary feud between their respective owners, the Moores and the Pogociellos, has lasted just as long. No one feels the impact more than 35-year-old widow Amanda Moore, who grew up working for her mom at Mimi's before scandalously marrying Frank Pogociello and changing sides to work at Frannie's. Tired of being caught in the middle, Amanda sends an SOS to Food Wars, the reality TV restaurant competition.
-
-
Headache
- By Megan M. on 12-08-20
By: KJ Dell'Antonia
-
A Bridge Across the Ocean
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Kim Bubbs
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
February, 1946. World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Résistance spy. Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom.
-
-
Don't like ghost stories
- By connie nance on 03-18-17
By: Susan Meissner
-
Maria
- A Novel of Maria von Trapp
- By: Michelle Moran
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Natasha Soudek
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1950s, Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of a woman named Maria von Trapp. He’s intrigued to learn that she was once a novice who hoped to live quietly as an Austrian nun before her abbey sent her away to teach a widowed baron’s sickly child. What should have been a ten-month assignment, however, unexpectedly turned into a marriage proposal. And when the family was forced to flee their home to escape the Nazis, it was Maria who instructed them on how to survive using nothing but the power of their voices.
-
-
Great read
- By barbara on 09-11-24
By: Michelle Moran
-
The Editor
- By: Steven Rowley
- Narrated by: Michael Urie
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years of trying to make it as a writer in 1990s New York City, James Smale finally sells his novel to an editor at a major publishing house: none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie - or Mrs. Onassis, as she's known in the office - has fallen in love with James' candidly autobiographical novel, one that exposes his own dysfunctional family. But when the book's forthcoming publication threatens to unravel already fragile relationships, both within his family and with his partner, James finds that he can't bring himself to finish the manuscript.
-
-
Great story
- By Amazon Customer on 04-18-19
By: Steven Rowley
-
The Winter Orphans
- By: Kristin Beck
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote corner of France, Jewish refugee Ella Rosenthal has finally found a safe haven. It has been three years since she and her little sister, Hanni, left their parents to flee Nazi Germany, and they have been pursued and adrift in the chaos of war ever since. Now, they shelter among one hundred other young refugees in a derelict castle overseen by the Swiss Red Cross.
-
-
Heartbreaking
- By mjpc on 08-24-24
By: Kristin Beck
-
We Are Not Like Them
- A Novel
- By: Christine Pride, Jo Piazza
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Shayna Small, Kevin R. Free, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager.
-
-
These Author’s UNDERSTOOD the assignment!
- By Queenwdg on 10-25-21
By: Christine Pride, and others
-
As Bright as Heaven
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Cassandra Morris, Tavia Gilbert, Jorjeana Marie, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters - Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa - a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish flu reaches the shores of America.
-
-
As Bright as Heaven
- By Amazon Customer on 05-03-18
By: Susan Meissner
Amazing!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Perfect performance, I enjoyed it very much! A world I knew nothing about. Would have given more stars if some of the characters had a slightly more realistic journey.
Surprised this wasn't rated higher!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Raw and Beautiful writing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’m surprised that some reviewers say it isn’t really about being an expat. As an expat myself, I think the book is very much about that. That was part of the point of the book—that life is life no matter where you live, but there are some very special aspects added to life when you live so far from home. It’s startling to me how very similar my experience has been, even though I’m not the wealthy kind.
The characters are relatable, their choices understandable -though we cringe while they make them. In the end, we see them making realistic adaptations with new maturity and wisdom. It’s a story of hope and that of understanding that life is a continual process rather than a continuous line.
Loved it!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A Sweet Simple Heart-warming Listen
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not like tv show
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Humanity in tragedy
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you are expecting a book about love, relationships, forgiveness, and redemption, then you will love this book. If you are looking for something about ex-pats and their lives and struggles with foreign cultures, this is not that book.
Having lived as an ex-pat for 14 years, both single and with my husband and adopted local kids, I expected to connect with this story, especially since I had lived in Taiwan and visited Hong Kong many times so I know the land, the people and the culture.
This book is much less about being ex-patriates than it is about social groups and gaps; dealing with infertility, tragedy, betrayal, and infidelity; being the victim or the cause of suffering. It is about mothers, motherhood, and women, solidarity among women.
It is written beautifully, and develops gradually into a whole. There is no reason for it to be set in Hong Kong, but then no reason not to either.
Three women, each struggling with her own burdens, then suffers another deeper blow. This is about how they handle this, how they view others and then themselves, grow stronger to cope with their lives, then learn about patience, forgiveness, acceptance, and redemption. Along the way, they learn about mothers and what "woman" means.
Incidental to the women's stories, are the three men and the ways in which they deal with the same events the women are dealing with. One of the men is a stand-up, supportive guy who actually hangs in there and helps. The other two go off on their own pity-parties and, by the end of the story, haven't learned to be men. There is still hope for them, but that would be later.
The story loses a star for me because of the disconnect with the title. The ex-pats didn't have to deal with anything they wouldn't have confronted back home. The Hong Kong-ness didn't matter to the story; they could or would have been the same jerks there as here. What I wanted more of was how being in a foreign country makes you feel as if your actions are invisible to the world and don't matter because no one back home sees you. I wanted more than the little bit there was of how the ex-pats interact with the locals. There were a couple, all negative, but this book wasn't really about that. This was just a regular-coming-of-age story even though the women were beyond teenage.
There are quite a few tidbits of wisdom here like, "you have let happiness happen." These and all the redemptive events happen quite late in the story, so it is a bit hard to slog along to get there. But it really is a beautiful story, with many points to ponder.
You can be a jerk in a foreign country too
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wonderfully descriptive
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Any additional comments?
'We travel to find ourselves', or so the adage goes. The novel is set in Hong Kong, but it might as well be anywhere. I wasn’t expecting it, but instead of describing the dissimilarities or quirks of life abroad, JYKL presents several inter-twined stories, through which we get a sometimes insightful, sometimes base or guttural telling of the vicissitudes of their lives and how they live them – the latter two I found were more frequently from the minds of the characters themselves, although it is difficult to tell with an audiobook.The main stories are between Mercy and Margret, with additional pairs for Hillary and David, Hillary and Mercy, Mercy and her mother, Hillary and Julian, Mercy and Charles, Mercy and David, and et cetera for almost all the character pairs. Raw life, injury and pursuit of recovery are common themes, and I think you’ll enjoy the book most if you’re appreciative of the interplay between them and life abroad (think: the movie Wild, but with people).
In that case, the physical location is not the main point of being an expatriate – one may also note that that word can have a double meaning. But as a sometimes expatriate I can say that the book’s insights, quirks, description of daily life through the foreign background – and its actual lack of local perspective – are true to some of the emotional discovery of the ex-pat experience.
All in all, it’s a great novel, and I hope you’ll give it a listen.
p.s. this is my first review – I don’t normally like a book enough to do them.
Insightful to its characters' minds
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.