The Magnificent Esme Wells
A Novel
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 $24.29
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Saskia Maarleveld
-
By:
-
Adrienne Sharp
About this listen
From the nationally best-selling author of The True Memoirs of Little K, a deeply felt and historically detailed novel of family, loss, and love, told by an irrepressible young girl - the daughter of a two-bit gangster and a movie showgirl - growing up in golden-age Hollywood and Las Vegas in its early days.
Esme Silver has always taken care of her charming ne'er-do-well father, Ike Silver, a small-time crook with dreams of making it big with Bugsy Siegel. Devoted to her daddy, Esme is often his "date" at the racetrack, where she amiably fetches the hot dogs while keeping an eye to the ground for any cast-off tickets that may be winners.
In awe of her mother, Dina Wells, Esme is more than happy to be the foil who gets the beautiful Dina into meetings and screen tests with some of Hollywood's greats. When Ike gets an opportunity to move to Vegas - and, in what could at last be his big break, to help the man she knows as "Benny" open the Flamingo Hotel - life takes an unexpected turn for Esme. A stunner like her mother, the young girl catches the attention of Nate Stein, one of the Strip's most powerful men.
Narrated by the 20-year-old Esme, The Magnificent Esme Wells moves between pre-WWII Hollywood and postwar Las Vegas - a golden age when Jewish gangsters and movie moguls were often indistinguishable in looks and behavior. Esme's voice - sharp, observant, and with a quiet, mordant wit - chronicles the rise and fall and further fall of her complicated parents, as well as her own painful reckoning with love and life. A coming-of-age story with a tinge of noir, and a tale that illuminates the promise and perils of the American dream and its dreamers, The Magnificent Esme Wells is immersive, moving, and compelling.
©2018 Adrienne Sharp (P)2018 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Big Finish
- By: Brooke Fossey
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Duffy Sinclair, life boils down to one simple thing: maintaining his residence at the idyllic Centennial Assisted Living. Without it, he’s destined for the roach-infested nursing home down the road. So, he keeps his shenanigans to the bare minimum with the help of his straight-laced best friend and roommate, Carl Upton. But when Carl’s granddaughter Josie climbs through their bedroom window with booze on her breath and a black eye, Duffy’s faced with trouble that’s sticking around and hard to hide.
-
-
SO GOOD!
- By Berit☀️✨ on 04-17-20
By: Brooke Fossey
-
The London Girls
- By: Soraya M. Lane
- Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
London, 1941. The Blitz. When a Royal Navy memo arrives at head office, requesting female recruits to sign up as motorcycle dispatch riders, delivering highly classified orders across the country, three women jump at the chance to sign up for the most dangerous jobs in London.
-
-
The London Girls
- By Brenda Welchel on 07-04-23
By: Soraya M. Lane
-
The Sweet Taste of Muscadines
- A Novel
- By: Pamela Terry
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lila Bruce Breedlove never quite felt at home in Wesleyan, Georgia, especially after her father’s untimely demise when she was a child. Both Lila and her brother, Henry, fled north after high school, establishing fulfilling lives of their own. In contrast, their younger sister, Abigail, opted to remain behind to dote on their domineering, larger-than-life mother, Geneva. When their elderly mother dies suddenly and suspiciously in the muscadine arbor behind the family estate, Lila and Henry return to the town that essentially raised them.
-
-
Absolutely LOVED it!
- By Kenny Cook on 07-07-21
By: Pamela Terry
-
Miss Benson's Beetle
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist - the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind.
-
-
A well-written panorama of human tragedy
- By Film Fan on 07-03-21
By: Rachel Joyce
-
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
- By: Abbi Waxman
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all - or mostly all - excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster!
-
-
Engaging story but not well written
- By Rachel A. on 08-16-19
By: Abbi Waxman
-
The Whalebone Theatre
- A Novel
- By: Joanna Quinn
- Narrated by: Olivia Vinall
- Length: 18 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One blustery night in 1928, a whale washes up on the shores of the English Channel. By law, it belongs to the King, but twelve-year-old orphan Cristabel Seagrave has other plans. She and the rest of the household—her sister, Flossie; her brother, Digby, long-awaited heir to Chilcombe manor; Maudie Kitcat, kitchen maid; Taras, visiting artist—build a theatre from the beast’s skeletal rib cage. Within the Whalebone Theatre, Cristabel can escape her feckless stepparents and brisk governesses, and her imagination comes to life.
-
-
Unbelievable Debut Novel!
- By NTexHiker on 10-13-22
By: Joanna Quinn
-
The Big Finish
- By: Brooke Fossey
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Duffy Sinclair, life boils down to one simple thing: maintaining his residence at the idyllic Centennial Assisted Living. Without it, he’s destined for the roach-infested nursing home down the road. So, he keeps his shenanigans to the bare minimum with the help of his straight-laced best friend and roommate, Carl Upton. But when Carl’s granddaughter Josie climbs through their bedroom window with booze on her breath and a black eye, Duffy’s faced with trouble that’s sticking around and hard to hide.
-
-
SO GOOD!
- By Berit☀️✨ on 04-17-20
By: Brooke Fossey
-
The London Girls
- By: Soraya M. Lane
- Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
London, 1941. The Blitz. When a Royal Navy memo arrives at head office, requesting female recruits to sign up as motorcycle dispatch riders, delivering highly classified orders across the country, three women jump at the chance to sign up for the most dangerous jobs in London.
-
-
The London Girls
- By Brenda Welchel on 07-04-23
By: Soraya M. Lane
-
The Sweet Taste of Muscadines
- A Novel
- By: Pamela Terry
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lila Bruce Breedlove never quite felt at home in Wesleyan, Georgia, especially after her father’s untimely demise when she was a child. Both Lila and her brother, Henry, fled north after high school, establishing fulfilling lives of their own. In contrast, their younger sister, Abigail, opted to remain behind to dote on their domineering, larger-than-life mother, Geneva. When their elderly mother dies suddenly and suspiciously in the muscadine arbor behind the family estate, Lila and Henry return to the town that essentially raised them.
-
-
Absolutely LOVED it!
- By Kenny Cook on 07-07-21
By: Pamela Terry
-
Miss Benson's Beetle
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist - the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind.
-
-
A well-written panorama of human tragedy
- By Film Fan on 07-03-21
By: Rachel Joyce
-
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
- By: Abbi Waxman
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all - or mostly all - excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster!
-
-
Engaging story but not well written
- By Rachel A. on 08-16-19
By: Abbi Waxman
-
The Whalebone Theatre
- A Novel
- By: Joanna Quinn
- Narrated by: Olivia Vinall
- Length: 18 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One blustery night in 1928, a whale washes up on the shores of the English Channel. By law, it belongs to the King, but twelve-year-old orphan Cristabel Seagrave has other plans. She and the rest of the household—her sister, Flossie; her brother, Digby, long-awaited heir to Chilcombe manor; Maudie Kitcat, kitchen maid; Taras, visiting artist—build a theatre from the beast’s skeletal rib cage. Within the Whalebone Theatre, Cristabel can escape her feckless stepparents and brisk governesses, and her imagination comes to life.
-
-
Unbelievable Debut Novel!
- By NTexHiker on 10-13-22
By: Joanna Quinn
-
The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop
- A Novel
- By: Fannie Flagg
- Narrated by: Fannie Flagg
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bud Threadgoode grew up in the bustling little railroad town of Whistle Stop with his mother, Ruth, church-going and proper, and his Aunt Idgie, the fun-loving hell-raiser. Together they ran the town's popular Whistle Stop Cafe, known far and wide for its fun and famous fried green tomatoes. And as Bud often said of his childhood to his daughter, Ruthie, "How lucky can you get?"
-
-
Truly lovely!!!
- By Emily M. on 11-03-20
By: Fannie Flagg
-
The Last Carolina Girl
- By: Meagan Church
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is worlds away from the harsh realities of the day. Loyal to her lumberjack father, she knows only of the familiarity of her small community, the magic of the natural world, and the creative intuition that prompts her to march to the beat of her own drum. But when an accident takes her father's life, leaving her an orphan, Leah finds herself cast into a family of strangers whose welcoming façade hides a terrible secret.
-
-
WOW
- By Savannah Brown on 06-10-23
By: Meagan Church
-
The Music of Bees
- A Novel
- By: Eileen Garvin
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days.
-
-
A little too many political agendas
- By Mike Thompson on 05-26-21
By: Eileen Garvin
-
Bewilderment
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son, Robin, is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.
-
-
Not Usually a Richard Powers Fan
- By Billy on 09-28-21
By: Richard Powers
-
The Address
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Brittany Pressley
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand New York apartment house the Dakota, leads to a job offer for Sara Smythe, her world is suddenly awash in possibility - no mean feat for a servant in 1884. The opportunity to move to America. The opportunity to be the female manager of the Dakota. And the opportunity to see more of Theo, who understands Sara like no one else...and is living in the Dakota with his wife and three young children.
-
-
Should be a movie!
- By Linda Slater on 10-19-17
By: Fiona Davis
-
The Book of Two Ways
- A Novel
- By: Jodi Picoult
- Narrated by: Patti Murin
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw 15 years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised.
-
-
✫✫ 5 Stars ✫✫
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-23-20
By: Jodi Picoult
-
The Nature of Fragile Things
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins, Jason Culp
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.
-
-
The Nature of Fragile Things is a 5 star listen!
- By Kathy… send to help my husband to sleep!! on 02-04-21
By: Susan Meissner
-
A Place to Land
- By: Lauren K. Denton
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Violet Figg and her sister Trudy have lived a quiet life in Sugar Bend ever since a night forty years ago stole Trudy’s voice and cemented Violet’s role as Trudy’s fierce and loyal protector. Now, Trudy spends her days making sculptures from found objects and speaking via notes written on scraps of paper, while Violet runs their art shop, monitors the bird activity up and down the water, and tries not to think of her one great love she gave up in order to keep her sister safe.
-
-
Tedious and unimaginative
- By angela r on 10-19-22
By: Lauren K. Denton
-
Where the Lost Wander
- A Novel
- By: Amy Harmon
- Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo, Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at 20. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both. But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart.
-
-
Good story, bad reader
- By LoverofClassics on 06-09-20
By: Amy Harmon
-
The Bohemians
- A Novel
- By: Jasmin Darznik
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this novel of the glittering and gritty Jazz Age, a young aspiring photographer named Dorothea Lange arrives in San Francisco in 1918. As a newcomer - and naïve one at that - Dorothea is grateful for the fast friendship of Caroline Lee, a vivacious, straight-talking Chinese American with a complicated past, who introduces Dorothea to Monkey Block, an artists’ colony and the bohemian heart of the city. Dazzled by Caroline and her friends, Dorothea is catapulted into a heady new world of freedom, art, and politics.
-
-
Fascinating time, people and place
- By Claudio Salusso on 10-01-21
By: Jasmin Darznik
-
So Long, Chester Wheeler
- A Novel
- By: Catherine Ryan Hyde
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lewis Madigan is young, gay, out of work, and getting antsy when he’s roped into providing end-of-life care for his insufferable homophobic neighbor, Chester Wheeler. Lewis doesn’t need the aggravation, just the money. The only requirements: run errands, be on call, and put up with a miserable old churl no one else in Buffalo can bear. After exchanging barbs, bickering, baiting, and pushing buttons, Chester hits Lewis with the big ask. Lewis can’t say no to a dying wish.
-
-
Catherine Ryan Hyde is a phenomenal writer
- By Ken Lewis on 02-05-23
-
The Unknown Beloved
- A Novel
- By: Amy Harmon
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation—and to Dani Flanagan herself—than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.
-
-
Historical murder mystery
- By Buzy_reading on 06-01-22
By: Amy Harmon
Related to this topic
-
The Lonely Hearts Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Heather O'Neill
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
IMPECCABLE BEAUTIFUL Writing, Interesting Story
- By Jordyn on 05-24-17
By: Heather O'Neill
-
Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
-
-
A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
-
Some Girls
- My Life in a Harem
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser. At 18, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman would pay pretty girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next 18 months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah....
-
-
Boring, Pretentious Book
- By Marcos on 04-23-11
By: Jillian Lauren
-
The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
-
-
A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
-
The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.
-
-
Patchett Has It
- By Pamela Harvey on 06-10-08
By: Ann Patchett
-
Battleborn
- By: Claire Vaye Watkins
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Morgan Hallett, Laura Knight Keating, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.
-
-
Wonderful magnificent stories beautifully told
- By Pedro Ramirez on 12-03-15
-
The Lonely Hearts Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Heather O'Neill
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
IMPECCABLE BEAUTIFUL Writing, Interesting Story
- By Jordyn on 05-24-17
By: Heather O'Neill
-
Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
-
-
A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
-
Some Girls
- My Life in a Harem
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser. At 18, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman would pay pretty girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next 18 months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah....
-
-
Boring, Pretentious Book
- By Marcos on 04-23-11
By: Jillian Lauren
-
The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
-
-
A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
-
The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.
-
-
Patchett Has It
- By Pamela Harvey on 06-10-08
By: Ann Patchett
-
Battleborn
- By: Claire Vaye Watkins
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Morgan Hallett, Laura Knight Keating, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.
-
-
Wonderful magnificent stories beautifully told
- By Pedro Ramirez on 12-03-15
-
The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
-
-
I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
-
Kiss Carlo
- By: Adriana Trigiani
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1949, and South Philadelphia bursts with opportunity during the postwar boom. The Palazzini Cab Company & Western Union Telegraph Office, owned and operated by Dominic Palazzini and his three sons, is flourishing: Business is good, and they're surrounded by sympathetic wives and daughters-in-law, with grandchildren on the way. But a decades-long feud that split Dominic and his brother, Mike, and their once-close families sets the stage for a rematch.
-
-
Wow!!
- By MCMAK on 07-16-17
By: Adriana Trigiani
-
The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
-
-
Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Nine Lives
- Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans
- By: Dan Baum
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nines Lives is a multivoiced biography of a dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city, told through the lives of nine unforgettable characters and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed New Orleans in the 1960s, and Hurricane Katrina, which nearly destroyed it. Dan Baum brings this kaleidoscopic portrait to life, showing us what was lost in the storm and what remains to be saved.
-
-
Do not miss if you're interested in New Orleans
- By Kelly on 03-22-18
By: Dan Baum
-
Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
-
-
Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
-
American Rose
- A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee
- By: Karen Abbott
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the critically acclaimed Sin in the Second City, best-selling author Karen Abbott “pioneered sizzle history” (USA Today). Now she returns with the gripping and expansive story of America’s coming-of-age - told through the extraordinary life of Gypsy Rose Lee and the world she survived and conquered. America in the Roaring Twenties. Vaudeville was king. Talking pictures were only a distant flicker. Speakeasies beckoned beyond dimly lit doorways; money flowed fast and free.
-
-
Well done biography of a complicated Icon
- By Moire on 01-27-11
By: Karen Abbott
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
-
-
A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
-
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Laguna Heat
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.
-
-
Fabulous
- By Stacy on 02-24-09
-
Miss Lonelyhearts
- By: Nathanael West
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser, Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. The novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.
-
-
Charged with Meaning, and Far Leftist Leaning
- By W Perry Hall on 01-27-16
By: Nathanael West
What listeners say about The Magnificent Esme Wells
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Frank Donnelly
- 06-12-20
A Well Written Novel Set In The American West in 1939 thru The Early 1950s
This is a well written and well narrated novel about a little girl growing up in California, and later, Las Vegas from 1939 until the early 1950. The story is told from the perspective of the protagonist. The novel mixes both the so called golden years of Hollywood with the early years of modern Las Vegas. There is a certain "time capsule" aspect to this novel, along with a certain modern American "Noir".
I liked it a lot. It is not an "action novel" per se, and is not a "page turner". It moves along somewhat slowly at times, but is always interesting if one is interested in Hollywood and early Las Vegas, as I am. The author uses a fairly sophisticated vocabulary and I am glad that I purchased the Kindle at the same time, so that I could refer to the actual written terms, historical names, and nomenclature. Thank You...
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- R. Grady
- 08-12-23
Disappointed
Beautiful descriptions, but nothing ever really happens. It’s a story of a couple miserable people doing the same things over and over again.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 04-05-19
Loved it!
As someone who has lived many years in both Southern California and Las Vegas I felt close to the story. The storyline was interesting and well written. The performance was excellent.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Fairsari
- 03-10-20
Interesting story
Esme was an interesting character raised by an ambitious mother and a father who was first a bookie, a gambler, thug and finally.a robber. She lost her beautiful mother at a young age, and eventually moved to Las Vegas with her father. The city was starting to boom with casinos built and owned by mobsters. Esme becomes a cigarette girl at 15, a dancer in the casino club and finally the mistress of a mobster Nick Stein. She learns about the violence and killings that her mentor, lover is capable of and tries to leave him. it is a sad story of a woman defined by the hopeless dreams of her parents in an era of glittering actors and actresses as well as mobsters who make appearances throughout the novel in both the city of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. From a historical perspective it was interesting to glimpse the who's who of Hollywood in the 30's and 40's as well as the mob who established Las Vegas as a gambling mega but it dragged in some parts.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- RueRue
- 12-10-18
More history lesson than story
The author has recreated Hollywood and Las Vegas circa 1940 -1950, and included quite a few real-life players in the story. Unfortunately the story itself and the non-real-life characters are uninteresting and flat. Good narration.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!