
The Gardins of Edin
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Bahni Turpin
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By:
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Rosey Lee
About this listen
When the bonds in their family begin to fray, four Black women fight to preserve their legacy, heal their wounds, and move forward together in this heartwarming contemporary debut novel with loose parallels to beloved women from the Bible.
“The surprises and heart in this fast-paced family drama kept me turning pages late into the night.”—KJ Dell’Antonia, New York Times bestselling author of The Chicken Sisters
GEORGIA AUTHOR OF THE YEAR NOMINEE
The four women of the Gardin family live side-by-side in Edin, Georgia, but residing in tight proximity doesn’t mean everything is picture-perfect. Ruth runs the family’s multimillion-dollar peanut business, a legacy of the Gardins’ formerly enslaved ancestors. But tensions have intensified since the death of her husband, Beau, and she feels like an outsider in the very place she wishes to belong.
Sisters Mary and Martha fuel the family tension. Martha’s unfounded mistrust of Ruth causes her to constantly seek ways to undermine Ruth’s decisions with the business, while Mary, trying to focus on her new restaurant that serves healthy comfort food, is dragged into the family fray by Martha.
For years, Naomi, the matriarch who raised the sisters after their parents’ death and supported Ruth in her grief, has played peacemaker. But as she decides to take a step back, hidden truths, life-and-death circumstances, and escalating clashes finally force the Gardin women to grapple with what it means to be a family.
A heartwarming Southern story of family and all its many complexities, The Gardins of Edin delivers a thoughtful portrayal of four women trying to hold on to their secrets. Women who just might—if they can only let go—find the peace they seek by holding on to one another.
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Critic reviews
“In a clever twist, debut author Rosey Lee plucks four women inspired by the Bible and sets them down in a tension-filled contemporary Black family struggling to find answers to messy and pesky questions. As they sort out relational fireworks, will they figure out how to stay a family and also be their best selves? It’s a loving and lovely journey from an exciting, talented new author willing to explore the meaning of family in intriguing ways.” —Patricia Raybon, Christy Award-winning author of the Annalee Spain Mystery series and two critically acclaimed memoirs, My First White Friend and I Told the Mountain to Move
“Rosey Lee’s The Gardins of Edin testifies to all what it means to be family. It conveys the passion, heartbreak, faithfulness, and conflict that come with loving the people closest to you. Readers will wish they owned a cottage on the Gardin estate or lived close enough to witness firsthand all the goings-on in Lee’s fascinating saga.” —Robin W. Pearson, Christy Award-winning author
“Nothing complicates a family more than a family business. The Gardins of Edin by Rosey Lee is a gorgeous debut that freshly examines the painful past of two sisters and their matriarch, their cousin by marriage, and their successful peanut farm. With courage and ambition akin to the casts and epic dramas of Tayari Jones, Lee has written a page-turner of grief and hope.” —Melissa Scholes Young, author of The Hive
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Story
Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early 20s, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
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Fantastic book!
- By steph on 02-25-18
By: Kimmery Martin
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Skye Falling
- A Novel
- By: Mia McKenzie
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When she was twenty-six and broke, Skye didn’t think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye still moves through life entirely—and unrepentantly—on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Maybe her junior high classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “Most Likely to Be Single” instead of “Most Ride-or-Die Homie,” but at least she’s always been free to do as she pleases.
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BEST BOOK EVER!!!!
- By Shenelle Williams on 07-08-21
By: Mia McKenzie
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In the Upper Country
- A Novel
- By: Kai Thomas
- Narrated by: Milton Barnes, Tymika Tafari, Wesley French
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The fates of two unforgettable women—one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life's last vital act—intertwine in this sweeping, deeply researched debut set in the Black communities of Ontario that were the last stop on the Underground Railroad. In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
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good story
- By Leo Garofalo on 04-14-24
By: Kai Thomas
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Daughters of the Dust
- A Gullah-Geechee Novel
- By: Julie Dash
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing from the magical world of her iconic Sundance award-winning film, Julie Dash’s stand-alone novel tells another rich, historical tale of the Gullah-Geechee people: a multigenerational story about a Brooklyn College anthropology student who finds an unexpected homecoming when she heads to the South Carolina Sea Islands to study her ancestors.
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My BFF Bahni...
- By Lillian Collins on 12-31-22
By: Julie Dash
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My Name Is Venus Black
- A Novel
- By: Heather Lloyd
- Narrated by: Alex McKenna, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Venus Black is a straitlaced A student fascinated by the study of astronomy - until the night she commits a shocking crime that tears her family apart and ignites a media firestorm. Venus refuses to talk about what happened or why, except to blame her mother. Adding to the mystery, Venus’ developmentally challenged younger brother, Leo, goes missing. More than five years later, Venus is released from prison with a suitcase of used clothes, a fake identity, and a determination to escape her painful past.
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Loved it!
- By Yikes on 03-24-18
By: Heather Lloyd
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Caucasia
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie's confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents' marriage collapses.
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Wanted it to be better
- By AmyP33 on 05-27-25
By: Danzy Senna
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The Lonely Hearts Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Heather O'Neill
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of When We Lost Our Heads, a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans - in love with each other since they can remember - whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one’s origins.
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IMPECCABLE BEAUTIFUL Writing, Interesting Story
- By Jordyn on 05-24-17
By: Heather O'Neill
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Promise
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
- Narrated by: Imani Parks
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kindred sisters—Ezra and Cinthy—have grown up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful Maine village perched high up on coastal bluffs. But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbors, including Ezra’s best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way.
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Powerful!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-14-23
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The Skin and Its Girl
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Cypher
- Narrated by: Victoria Nassif, Haneen Arafat Murphy
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.
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Engaging story, very well told
- By Moth77 on 05-10-25
By: Sarah Cypher
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Vagabonds!
- A Novel
- By: Eloghosa Osunde
- Narrated by: Arit Okpo, Atta Otigba, Eloghosa Osunde, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance.
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One of the best books of 2022
- By Geonn Cannon on 03-19-22
By: Eloghosa Osunde
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The Bad Muslim Discount
- A Novel
- By: Syed M. Masood
- Narrated by: Pej Vahdat, Hend Ayoub
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.
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A great well developed story.
- By SBB on 02-11-21
By: Syed M. Masood
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A Lakeside Reunion
- By: C. Chilove
- Narrated by: Xenia Willacey
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Chareese “Reese” Devlin spent every summer of her childhood in the lake town of Mount Dora, Florida. Reese never realized that the idyllic haven hid a deep divide between the town’s haves and have-nots. Not until the summer she turned seventeen and fell for Duncan McNeal, a boy who lacked the pedigree so valued by her parents and their friends. After her family squashed the budding romance, Reese refused to return to the place she lost her heart. Now, ten years later, she’s back to attend her sister’s debutante ball and must come to terms with all she’s missed.
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Good story
- By Turtleberry on 12-05-24
By: C. Chilove
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A House Among the Trees
- A Novel
- By: Julia Glass
- Narrated by: Mary Stuart Masterson
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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When the revered children's book author Mort Lear dies accidentally at his Connecticut home, he leaves his property and all its contents to his trusted assistant, Tomasina Daulair, who is moved by his generosity but dismayed by the complicated and defiant directives in his will. Tommy knew Morty for more than four decades, since meeting him in a Manhattan playground when she was 12 and he was working on sketches for the book that would make him a star.
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Glass Fan
- By G Eliot on 07-17-17
By: Julia Glass
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Pride and Protest
- By: Nikki Payne
- Narrated by: Kacie Rogers, Ron Nery Jr.
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Liza B.—the only DJ who gives a jam—wants to take her neighborhood back from the soulless property developer dropping unaffordable condos on every street corner in DC. But her planned protest at a corporate event takes a turn after she mistakes the smoldering-hot CEO for the waitstaff. When they go toe-to-toe, the sparks fly—but her impossible-to-ignore family thwarts her every move. Liza wants Dorsey Fitzgerald out of her hood, but she’ll settle for getting him out of her head.
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The CHEMISTRY
- By Kristen Killen on 09-18-23
By: Nikki Payne
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Build Your House Around My Body
- A Novel
- By: Violet Kupersmith
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last minute.
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Epic, Horrifying & Mystical
- By Jonathan T. Jefferson on 07-20-21
Great Story with an Unexpected Twist
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the family dynamic
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cohesive dysfunctional family
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Wonderful read
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Love the family interactions
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