The Light in the Ruins
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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Mark Bramhall
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By:
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Chris Bohjalian
About this listen
From the New York Times best-selling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge - set in war-ravaged Tuscany.
It is 1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills south of Florence, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. Eighteen-year-old Cristina spends her days swimming in the pool, playing with her young niece and nephew, and wandering aimlessly amid the estate's gardens and olive groves. But when two soldiers, a German and an Italian, arrive at the villa asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis' bucolic tranquility is shattered. A young German lieutenant begins to court Cristina, the Nazis descend upon the estate demanding hospitality, and what was once their sanctuary becomes their prison.
In 1955 Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence police department, has her own demons. A beautiful woman, Serafina carefully hides her scars along with her haunting memories of the war. But when she is assigned to a gruesome new case - a serial killer targeting the Rosatis, murdering the remnants of the family one-by-one in cold blood - Serafina finds herself digging into a past that involves both the victims and her own tragic history.
Set against an exquisitely rendered Italian countryside, The Light in the Ruins unveils a breathtaking story of moral paradox, human frailty, and the mysterious ways of the heart.
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The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The Tenth Chamber
- By: Glenn Cooper
- Narrated by: Henri Lubatti
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Abbey of Ruac, rural France: A medieval script is discovered hidden behind an antique bookcase. Badly damaged, it is sent to Paris for restoration, and there literary historian Hugo Pineau begins to read the startling 14th-century text. Within its pages lies a fanciful tale of a painted cave and the secrets it contains - and a rudimentary map showing its position close to the abbey. Intrigued, Hugo enlists the help of archaeologist Luc Simard and the two men go exploring.
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Leaves Dan Brown's "INFERNO" in the Dust
- By karinzart on 07-06-13
By: Glenn Cooper
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The Lost Carousel of Provence
- By: Juliet Blackwell
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Long, lonely years have passed for the crumbling Château Clement, nestled well beyond the rolling lavender fields and popular tourist attractions of Provence. Once a bustling and dignified ancestral estate, now all that remains is the château's gruff, elderly owner and the softly whispered secrets of generations buried and forgotten. But time has a way of exposing history's dark stains, and when American photographer Cady Drake finds herself drawn to the château and its antique carousel, she longs to explore the relic's shadowy origins.
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Loved It!
- By T Heskett on 09-23-18
By: Juliet Blackwell
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Guernica
- A Novel
- By: Dave Boling
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Calling to mind such timeless war-and-love classics as Corelli's Mandolin and The English Patient, Guernica is a transporting novel that thrums with the power of storytelling and is peopled with characters driven by grit and heart.
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Guernica a good historical novel
- By ARLEENE on 04-26-11
By: Dave Boling
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The Race for Paris
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Normandy, 1944. To cover the fighting in France, Jane, a reporter for the Nashville Banner, and Liv, an Associated Press photographer, have already had to endure enormous danger and frustrating obstacles - including strict military regulations limiting what woman correspondents can do. Even so, Liv wants more. Encouraged by her husband, the editor of a New York newspaper, she's determined to be the first photographer to reach Paris with the Allies.
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Breathtaking
- By Jane Wilson on 08-14-15
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The Muse
- A Novel
- By: Jessie Burton
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Maria Elena Infantino
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery.
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Mixed narration
- By Amy Fleury on 08-05-16
By: Jessie Burton
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The Attack
- By: Yasmina Khadra
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a respected, dedicated surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. He has learned to live with the violence that plagues his city and works tirelessly to help the victims brought to the emergency room. But one night, a deadly bombing in a local restaurant takes a horrifyingly personal turn, when his wife's body is found among the dead, bearing injuries that match those typically found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers.
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Powerful
- By Diana - Audible on 04-17-12
By: Yasmina Khadra
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Letters from Paris
- By: Juliet Blackwell
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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After surviving the accident that took her mother's life, Claire Broussard worked hard to escape her small Louisiana hometown. But these days, she feels something lacking. Abruptly leaving her lucrative job in Chicago, Claire returns home to care for her ailing grandmother. There, she unearths a beautiful sculpture that her great-grandfather sent home from Paris after World War II. At her grandmother's urging, Claire travels to Paris to track down the centuries old mask-making atelier where the sculpture was created.
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love story, a mystery, a historical novel, or all
- By Bonnie on 11-15-16
By: Juliet Blackwell
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The Kindly Ones
- By: Jonathan Littell
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 39 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue, a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
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Office politics in hell
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 04-02-13
By: Jonathan Littell
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The Cellist of Sarajevo
- By: Steven Galloway
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Sarajevo, in the 1990s, is a hellish place. The ongoing war devours human life, tears families apart and transforms even banal routines, such as acquiring water, into life-threatening expeditions. Day after day, a cellist stations himself in the midst of the devastation, defying the ever-present snipers to play tributes to victims of a massacre. A true story of a cellist's resistance helps to form this pivotal event in Steven Galloway's extraordinary novel.
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One wonders if humans will ever be civilized
- By Elaine on 11-22-12
By: Steven Galloway
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
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Why Abridged
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In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts. The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain after double engine failure.
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...and just in time for Halloween!
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When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle, her life is changed forever. She withdraws into her photography hobby and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a box of photographs he won't let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was once a successful photographer. As her fascination begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a dark family secret.
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Excellent Psychological Thriller
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decent listen
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Wait till COVID19 has passed to read this one!
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Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
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Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is 24 years old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life.
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From the best selling and critically acclaimed author of Trans-Sister Radio comes a hauntingly beautiful story of the ties that bind families - and the strains that pull them apart. "Bohjalian writes honestly and often movingly," says Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal calls it "tender...[written] with poetic skill."
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Touching, and Sincere
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Crissy Dowling has created a world that suits her perfectly. She passes her days by the pool in a private cabana, she splurges on ice cream but never gains an ounce, and each evening she transforms into a Princess, performing her musical cabaret inspired by the life of the late Diana Spencer. Some might find her strange or even delusional, an American speaking with a British accent, hair feathered into a style thirty years old, living and working in a casino that has become a dated trash heap.
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Brilliant
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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands
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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened?
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Overall a good book, but poorly narrated
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The Law of Similars: A Novel
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When one of homeopath Carissa Lake's patients falls into an allergy-induced coma, possibly due to her prescribed remedy, Leland Fowler's office starts investigating the case.
By: Chris Bohjalian
What listeners say about The Light in the Ruins
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- B. Siemens
- 08-16-13
Breathes new life
This is another delectable treat from a proven, master of character development and story telling. I am so amazed that every novel that I read by Chris Bohjalian is a new and fresh treatment of his chosen topic. The Light in the Ruins does not disappoint as it breathes new life into a story of the travesties of war, the aftermath, and human touch that comes through.
The two narrators in this Audiobook edition added to the whole experience with clarity and timing.
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8 people found this helpful
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- RAE
- 01-03-17
OK- not spelllbinding - a book club book
its not my favorite - might have been better had I been reading it -
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- Shannon Robbins
- 08-28-13
Suspenseful but a very sad story
What did you love best about The Light in the Ruins?
The way the story was told, it kept me guessing until the end of the book.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
It wasn't who I thought if would be.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Susan
- 09-12-20
Thoughtful and educational
Excellent narration. Characters have beautiful Italian accents. Absorbing story and totally unpredictable. I loved the history it gave.
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Performance
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- Net
- 08-21-13
Good story, terrible performance
Would you be willing to try another one of Cassandra Campbell and Mark Bramhall ’s performances?
No. Mark Bramhall was perfectly fine. Cassandra Campbell ruined the story for me
Any additional comments?
The performance is a complete distraction to the story. The fake voices are annoying and the accents are awful. This is my first negative review of a performance. This one just could not go without comment. Purchase the book rather than the audibook.
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4 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Taryn
- 07-14-13
Kept me listening
I cant say that this is one of Chris Bohjalian's best books, but I enjoyed the narration and the story intrigued me. I liked the way he got into the details of life in Italy for a "noble" family during the German occupation and weaved a murder mystery/ serial killer into it.That was a bit contrived in my opinion but that is what fiction is all about! It was by no means a favorite for me but it was entertaining and kept my interest.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Seneca
- 08-03-13
Narration is grindingly distracting.
Is there anything you would change about this book?
The reader.
What other book might you compare The Light in the Ruins to and why?
No particular book, or 100 books, nothing too awfully distinctive.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Cassandra Campbell and Mark Bramhall ?
Anyone with a voice ranger over approximately 1.5 octaves, who would therefore not have had to resort to "tricks" to create different voices. Helium inhaled falsetto for a child and other characters. 2nd soprano male voices because the reader can't dip any lower than the tone of the non-dialog text. Someone who understands that creating an irritating tone for a character is simply a distraction from the text. This is the author's story, not a vainglorious performance. Awful.
Was The Light in the Ruins worth the listening time?
Absolutely not. Quit and bought the book.
Any additional comments?
Fire this narrator. Don't equate female author with female narrator when there are an equal number of male characters. Worse than a waste of money.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Holly B.
- 12-15-15
Killer's identity remains a mystery until the end!
So unusual. it drives me crazy when I guess it early on. Also loved his voice.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mizzou Girl
- 01-10-15
Great narration
While I enjoyed listening to this book, I found the ending to be somewhat disappointing. I learned quite a bit about Italy in WWII.
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- Lynn Connolly
- 01-31-18
Absorbing, yet disappointing.
The story begins with an interesting account of an aristocratic family who's lives were desecrated during WW2 in Italy. A decade later, the grizzly murder of one remaining family member occurred ... and the investigation began, - weaving the past and present. I listened until the conclusion, although I lost interest halfway through. The ending was terribly disappointing.
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