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The Illness Lesson
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
“Astoundingly original.” (The New York Times Book Review)
From the author of the award-winning debut story collection We Show What We Have Learned, a vivid work of historical fiction with shocking and eerie connections to our own time.
At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, promise a groundbreaking education for young women. But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in 19th-century New England.
When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling. But it's not long before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. One by one, they sicken. Fearing ruin for the school, Samuel overrules Caroline's pleas to inform the girls' parents and turns instead to a noted physician, a man whose sinister ministrations - based on a shocking historic treatment - horrify Caroline. As the men around her continue to dictate, disastrously, all terms of the girls' experience, Caroline's own body begins to betray her. To save herself and her young charges, she will have to defy every rule that has governed her life, her mind, her body, and her world.
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Story
At Montverre, an ancient and elite academy hidden high in the mountains, society's best and brightest are trained for excellence in the grand jeu—the great game—an arcane and mysterious competition that combines music, art, math, poetry, and philosophy. Léo Martin once excelled at Monteverre, but lost his passion for scholarly pursuits after a violent tragedy. He turned to politics instead, and became a rising star in the ruling party, until a small act of conscience cost him his career. Now, he has been exiled back to Monteverre, his fate uncertain.
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It was confusing
- By Hannah Blumenthal on 09-03-22
By: Bridget Collins
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Spellbreaker
- Spellbreaker, Book 1
- By: Charlie N. Holmberg
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden, Joel Froomkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The orphaned Elsie Camden learned as a girl that there were two kinds of wizards in the world: those who pay for the power to cast spells and those, like her, born with the ability to break them. But as an unlicensed magic user, her gift is a crime. Commissioned by an underground group known as the Cowls, Elsie uses her spellbreaking to push back against the aristocrats and help the common man. Elite magic user Bacchus Kelsey is one elusive spell away from his mastership when he catches Elsie breaking an enchantment. To protect her secret, Elsie strikes a bargain.
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Interesting read/listen
- By Roderica Ruddle on 12-21-20
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When We Were Young & Brave
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Rosie Jones, Imogen Church
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth, and those in her charge. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status.
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heart wrenching And inspiring!!
- By Justin Drogoszewski on 11-22-20
By: Hazel Gaynor
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A Life Once Dreamed
- By: Rachel Fordham
- Narrated by: Teri Clark Linden
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Six years ago, a shocking secret sent Agnes Pratt running in search of a new start. She found it in Penance, a rugged town of miners and lumberjacks in the Dakota Territory, where she became Miss Aggie, respected schoolteacher and confirmed old maid. But the past has a way of catching up with people. When childhood friend and former sweetheart James Harris accepts a position as the town doctor, Aggie's pleasantly predictable days suddenly become anything but.
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Beautiful Dream!
- By A+D on 08-04-20
By: Rachel Fordham
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The Lost Melody
- By: Joanna Davidson Politano
- Narrated by: Amy Scanlon
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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When concert pianist Vivienne Mourdant’s father dies, he leaves to her the care of a patient at Hurstwell Asylum. Vivienne had no idea the woman existed, and yet her portrait is shockingly familiar. When the asylum claims she was never a patient there, Vivienne is compelled to discover what happened to the figure she remembers from childhood dreams.
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New favorite!!!
- By Lisa Scott on 12-13-22
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All the Murmuring Bones
- By: A.G. Slatter
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Orphaned as a young child, Mirin O'Malley has been brought up by her grandparents on their isolated, rambling estate Hob's Hallow. Long ago her family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer, the terrifying creatures who live in the depths of the sea: safety for their merchant ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and their fortunes have suffered as a result. When Mirin's grandfather dies, her grandmother puts in train a plan to restore their glory - but at the price of Mirin's freedom.
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Drags on and on.
- By Amanda Turner on 04-10-21
By: A.G. Slatter
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The Binding
- A Novel
- By: Bridget Collins
- Narrated by: Carl Prekopp
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a bookbinder - a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born.
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Just wow
- By RUKiddingMee on 05-18-19
By: Bridget Collins
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The Distant Hours
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.
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Right Mood At The Right Time
- By Simone on 11-13-12
By: Kate Morton
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Ember Island
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A compelling tale of two women separated by a century who discover long-buried secrets in an Australian manor house. In 1891, Tilly Kirkland is reeling with shock and guilt after her tempestuous marriage ends in horrific circumstances. Fleeing to the farthest place she knows, Tilly takes a job on Ember Island in Moreton Bay, Australia, where she becomes the governess to the prison superintendent's precocious young daughter, Nell.
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Not her best book
- By Beth on 05-02-18
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The Fairy's Tale
- The Pathways Tree, Book 1
- By: F. D. Lee
- Narrated by: Eilidh Beaton
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Bea is a lowly cabbage fairy, but she dreams of being an official Fairy Godmother. So when she is finally given a chance to prove her worth, Bea is determined to make a success of it. Besides, how hard can a Happy Ever After story be? Every girl wants to be rescued by a handsome man, don’t they? Apparently not. Bea's heroine doesn't want to be in her story, and her hero is much more interested in the ugly sister. The same ugly sister who is trying to overthrow the Kingdom.
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Really good book!!
- By Chasity on 01-14-21
By: F. D. Lee
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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The House Girl
- A Novel
- By: Tara Conklin
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 2004: Lina Sparrow is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. The year is 1852: Josephine is a 17-year-old house slave who tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. It is through her father, renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers a controversy rocking the art world: Art historians now suspect that the revered paintings of Lu Anne Bell, an antebellum artist known for her humanizing portraits of the slaves who worked her Virginia tobacco farm, were actually the work of her house slave, Josephine.
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Disappointing
- By Jeanette Finan on 02-21-13
By: Tara Conklin
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The Ten Thousand Doors of January
- By: Alix E. Harrow
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure, and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
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A princess in a castle can't fend for herself
- By Summer on 11-11-19
By: Alix E. Harrow
What listeners say about The Illness Lesson
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tiffany Ritter
- 03-09-23
Circling the drain
DNF. Tried and tried, but this story never picked up in intensity and by 2/3 in I felt no understanding of, connection to, like or dislike of any of the characters or even the setting. It had potential, certainly, but I felt like the story was just kind of spinning it’s wheels and circling the drain. Going nowhere fast, but not fast enough for me to waste valuable reading time on it.
No knocks on the performance, other than the fact that by this point in the audiobook I still had to keep looking up whether it was taking place in England or the US. The accent was somewhere in the middle.
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