
The Kill
La Curée
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Narrated by:
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Leighton Pugh
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By:
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Émile Zola
About this listen
A French hunting term, denoting the portion of game thrown to the hounds who killed it, the novel’s original title La Curée (1872) neatly foreshadows Zola’s exploration of the rapacious, animalistic greed of the newly rich bourgeoisie during the Second Empire of Napoleon III. The main protagonist, Saccard, takes his own spoils from corrupt property speculation in the wake of Baron Haussmann’s radical reconstruction of Paris.
Against a backdrop of modernisation, extravagant luxury, political intrigue and sexual immorality, Saccard treats close relationships as money-making opportunities and loved ones as mere commodities. As one character puts it: ‘You see, everything is fine, as long as you make money from it.’
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Story
Holed up with other mothers-to-be in a secret maternity home in Los Angeles, Scarlett Chen is far from her native China, where she worked in a factory and fell in love with the married owner, Boss Yeung. Now she’s carrying his baby. To ensure that his child - his first son - has every advantage, Boss Yeung has shipped Scarlett off to give birth on American soil. As Scarlett awaits the baby’s arrival, she spars with her imperious housemates. The only one who fits in even less is Daisy, a spirited pregnant teenager who is being kept apart from her American boyfriend.
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Wonderful surprise!
- By Barbara Voss on 10-16-18
By: Vanessa Hua
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Cousin Bette
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Johanna Ward
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Bette referred to in this magnificent novel's title is Lisbeth Fischer, an excruciatingly cunning poor relation who both depends upon and nurses a terrible grudge against the family of her beautiful cousin, Adeline. That family is slowly being ruined by the uncontrollable sexual appetites of Adeline's husband, Baron Hulot - appetites that will, in time, give Cousin Bette opportunity to exact her vengeance.
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Narrator!
- By Murasaki on 12-03-06
By: Honoré de Balzac
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The Harness Room
- By: L. P. Hartley
- Narrated by: Charlie Keeffe
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Colonel Macready thinks his bookish seventeen-year-old son Fergus is too soft, so he enlists the help of his manly chauffeur, Fred Carrington, to help whip the boy into shape. But the sweaty afternoons in the harness room above the garage take a turn the Colonel hadnt foreseen when Fergus and Freds boxing sessions lead first to friendship, and then to something more . . .
By: L. P. Hartley
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Facial Justice
- By: L. P. Hartley
- Narrated by: Milly Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
World War III left the world in ruins, but now a new society has sprung up from the ashes, ruled by an unseen dictator who believes a system of strict equality is the best way to prevent future strife. Too much beauty, intelligence, or personality is severely frowned upon. Those who run afoul of the Dictator are punished, sometimes with death and sometimes with a more mysterious and terrible fate, being "emptied".
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Fascinating Story and Exceptional Narration
- By M.T. on 01-07-23
By: L. P. Hartley
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Incidental Inventions
- By: Elena Ferrante
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Elena Ferrante is the best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend, now an HBO original series. Collected here for the first time are the seeds of future novels, the timely reflections of this internationally beloved storyteller, the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called “one of the great novelists of our time” (New York Times).
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Enjoyed her insightful writing
- By Even on 02-28-23
By: Elena Ferrante
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The Go-Between
- By: L. P. Hartley
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
During the long, hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk. There he falls in love with his friend's older sister, who commissions him to ferry secret messages to the local farmer, her lover. His naiveté sustains their affair until ultimately leading to an event that will change their lives irrevocably.
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Great walk back in time.
- By Linda Ward on 01-19-17
By: L. P. Hartley
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Roderick Hudson
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Roderick Hudson and Rowland Mallet are like two sides of the same coin: while the whimsical and egotistical Roderick recklessly follows his passions in the name of art, altruistic Rowland lives with restraint and measure. The two are bound together almost immediately when Rowland is shown a striking bronze statuette in his cousin's garden, which moves him to meet and support its creator, Roderick. They abandon their provincial New England lives for Rome, where the young sculptor perfects his craft and flourishes among Italy's great masters.
By: Henry James
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Can You Forgive Her?
- By: Anthony Trollope
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 27 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Can You Forgive Her? is the first of the six Palliser novels. Here Trollope examines parliamentary election and marriage, politics and privacy. As he dissects the Victorian upper class, issues and people shed their pretenses under his patient, ironic probe.
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Very Very Victorian
- By David on 09-27-11
By: Anthony Trollope
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The Warden
- By: Anthony Trollope
- Narrated by: Nigel Hawthorne
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the world of the Victorian professional and landed classes, the story centres on Mr Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to it.
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a delight
- By Janet on 12-22-08
By: Anthony Trollope
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
one of Zola's best
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