
The First Bright Thing
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 $15.72
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Petrea Burchard
-
Tim Campbell
-
By:
-
J. R. Dawson
About this listen
When darkness descends, expect sparks. The First Bright Thing by J. R. Dawson is a spellbinding debut for fans of The Night Circus and The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue.
Welcome to the Circus of the Fantasticals . . .
After World War I, a select few wake up with frightening magical abilities. Rin can jump through time. Her wife, Odette, can heal the unhealable. And their friend, Mauve, sees what others can’t. Alone, afraid and exiled from regular society, the trio create a haven for Sparks – people like them – a circus housing those who are powerful and lost.
Now it’s 1926, and Rin runs the Circus of the Fantasticals. It travels across the States, spreading enchantment and joy to those who need it. Rin hopes their performances leave the world brighter than before. But new threats loom that even circus lights can’t vanquish. Another devastating war is barrelling across the world. Worse still, Rin’s past creeps closer every day, a malevolent shadow she can’t fully escape. This takes the form of a rival circus, with tents as black as midnight. Its leader has dark powers and even darker desires. For the Sparks have something he wants – and Rin knows he won’t stop until he has it.
‘This is the magic circus book that I have been looking for all my life. It's compelling and brilliant' - Seanan McGuire
*Longlisted for Best Novel at the British Science Fiction Association Awards 2023*
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Rosemary and Rue
- An October Daye Novel, Book 1
- By: Seanan McGuire
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world of Faerie never disappeared: it merely went into hiding, continuing to exist parallel to our own. Secrecy is the key to Faerie’s survival—but no secret can be kept forever, and when the fae and mortal worlds collide, changelings are born. Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, these second-class children of Faerie spend their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations.
-
-
Missed Matched Pair
- By G Reinhardt on 11-26-11
By: Seanan McGuire
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
Starling House
- A Reese's Book Club Pick
- By: Alix E. Harrow
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Opal is a lot of things—orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier—but above all, she's a determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago. All she left behind were dark rumors—and her home. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway.
-
-
A great spooky atmosphere captured well in audio
- By downtown on 10-09-23
By: Alix E. Harrow
-
On Earth as It Is on Television
- By: Emily Jane
- Narrated by: Hayden Bishop
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since long before the spaceships' fleeting presence, Blaine has been content to go along with the whims of his supermom wife and half-feral, television-addicted children. But when the kids blithely ponder skinning people to see if they're aliens, and his wife drags them all on a surprise road trip to Disney World, even steady Blaine begins to crack. Half a continent away, Heather floats in a Malibu pool and watches the massive ships hover overhead. Maybe her life is finally going to start.
-
-
Their narrator was great…that is all.
- By Matthew Nichols on 12-23-23
By: Emily Jane
-
The Fragile Threads of Power
- By: V. E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Kate Reading, Marisa Calin, Michael Kramer
- Length: 21 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London. Until the magic grew too fast and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them in a desperate gamble to protect their own. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known in recent memory—Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk, of White London.
-
-
Best in the series!
- By Pat on 10-09-23
By: V. E. Schwab
-
Thornhedge
- By: T. Kingfisher
- Narrated by: Jennifer Blom
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right? If only. Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold.
-
-
Not everything can be fixed
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 08-15-23
By: T. Kingfisher
-
Rosemary and Rue
- An October Daye Novel, Book 1
- By: Seanan McGuire
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world of Faerie never disappeared: it merely went into hiding, continuing to exist parallel to our own. Secrecy is the key to Faerie’s survival—but no secret can be kept forever, and when the fae and mortal worlds collide, changelings are born. Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, these second-class children of Faerie spend their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations.
-
-
Missed Matched Pair
- By G Reinhardt on 11-26-11
By: Seanan McGuire
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
Starling House
- A Reese's Book Club Pick
- By: Alix E. Harrow
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Opal is a lot of things—orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier—but above all, she's a determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago. All she left behind were dark rumors—and her home. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway.
-
-
A great spooky atmosphere captured well in audio
- By downtown on 10-09-23
By: Alix E. Harrow
-
On Earth as It Is on Television
- By: Emily Jane
- Narrated by: Hayden Bishop
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since long before the spaceships' fleeting presence, Blaine has been content to go along with the whims of his supermom wife and half-feral, television-addicted children. But when the kids blithely ponder skinning people to see if they're aliens, and his wife drags them all on a surprise road trip to Disney World, even steady Blaine begins to crack. Half a continent away, Heather floats in a Malibu pool and watches the massive ships hover overhead. Maybe her life is finally going to start.
-
-
Their narrator was great…that is all.
- By Matthew Nichols on 12-23-23
By: Emily Jane
-
The Fragile Threads of Power
- By: V. E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Kate Reading, Marisa Calin, Michael Kramer
- Length: 21 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London. Until the magic grew too fast and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them in a desperate gamble to protect their own. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known in recent memory—Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk, of White London.
-
-
Best in the series!
- By Pat on 10-09-23
By: V. E. Schwab
-
Thornhedge
- By: T. Kingfisher
- Narrated by: Jennifer Blom
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right? If only. Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold.
-
-
Not everything can be fixed
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 08-15-23
By: T. Kingfisher
-
Black River Orchard
- A Novel
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, Brittany Pressley, Sean Patrick Hopkins, and others
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something besides the season is changing there. Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black. Take a bite of one of these apples, and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker.
-
-
Points for originality but…
- By kisa on 11-09-23
By: Chuck Wendig
-
Fourth Wing (Part 2 of 2) (Dramatized Adaptation)
- The Empyrean, Book 1
- By: Rebecca Yarros
- Narrated by: full cast, Robb Moreira, Megan Poppy, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
-
-
5 REDEMPTION-FOR-PART-1 ⭐️’s
- By ➷➹➸❥HFB🔹🔹🔹 on 03-02-24
By: Rebecca Yarros
-
The September House
- By: Carissa Orlando
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people. Margaret is staying.
-
-
Insufferable.
- By Jeremy Brandon on 09-23-23
By: Carissa Orlando
-
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
- A Novel
- By: Emma Törzs
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna’s isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy.
-
-
The most difficult audiobook I've ever listened 2
- By John on 06-04-23
By: Emma Törzs
-
The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
-
-
We Must Always Remember
- By Cammie on 09-28-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
In the Lives of Puppets
- By: TJ Klune
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots—fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe.
-
-
Above all else, be brave
- By Tricia Bravener on 04-28-23
By: TJ Klune
-
The Wishing Game
- A Novel
- By: Meg Shaffer
- Narrated by: Rachel L. Jacobs, Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children’s author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner’s life in this absorbing and whimsical novel.
-
-
Painful to listen to
- By Dan Viens on 09-08-23
By: Meg Shaffer
-
A Study in Drowning
- By: Ava Reid
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Effy Sayre has always believed in fairy tales. Haunted by visions of the Fairy King since childhood, she’s had no choice. Her tattered copy of Angharad—Emrys Myrddin’s epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, then destroys him—is the only thing keeping her afloat. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to redesign the late author’s estate, Effy feels certain it’s her destiny. But musty, decrepit Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task, and its residents are far from welcoming.
-
-
A thrilling joy from start to finish
- By Michael J. Anderson on 09-28-23
By: Ava Reid
-
Curious Tides
- By: Pascale Lacelle
- Narrated by: Gary Furlong, Shakira Shute, Toni Frutin
- Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess. Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them. To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz—a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic.
-
-
Predictable? Riveting!
- By Julia on 03-03-25
By: Pascale Lacelle
-
The Book That Wouldn't Burn
- By: Mark Lawrence
- Narrated by: Jessica Whittaker
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a book-choked chamber older than empires and larger than cities. The girl has been plucked from the outskirts of civilization to be trained as a librarian, studying the mysteries of the great library at the heart of her kingdom. They were never supposed to meet. But in the library, they did. Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another.
-
-
Keeps the reader guessing
- By Gr on 08-17-23
By: Mark Lawrence
-
She Who Became the Sun
- By: Shelley Parker-Chan
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
-
-
Almost great.
- By stacey on 09-13-21
-
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
- A Novel
- By: Shannon Chakraborty
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Amin El Gamal
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.
-
-
Not City of Brass, A Fun Swashbuckling Adventure
- By Pele on 03-23-23