
The Oceans and the Stars
A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story; The Seven Battles and Mutiny of Athena, Patrol Coastal Ship 15
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Narrated by:
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Traber Burns
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By:
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Mark Helprin
About this listen
Mark Helprin, New York Times bestselling author of Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, returns with a fast-paced, beautifully written novel about the majesty of the sea; a life dedicated to duty, honor, and country; and the gift of falling in love.
A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined always to do what’s right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line’s only prototype—Athena, Patrol Coastal 15—with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral.
Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride, and while supervising Athena’s fitting out in New Orleans, encounters a brilliant lawyer, Katy Farrar, with whom he falls in last-chance love. Soon thereafter, he is deployed on a mission that subjects his integrity, morality, and skill to the ultimate test and which ensures that Athena will live forever in the annals of the Navy.
As in the Odyssey, Katy is the force that keeps him alive and the beacon that lights the way home through seven battles, mutiny, and court martial.
In classic literary form, an enthralling new novel that extolls the virtues of living by the laws of conscience, decency, and sacrifice, The Oceans and the Stars is nothing short of a masterpiece.
©2023 Mark Helprin. Published in 2023 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS, New York. All rights reserved. (P)2023 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude.
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Eloquent & Honest
- By Sara on 09-30-15
By: Abigail Thomas
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The Book of Thorns
- By: Hester Fox
- Narrated by: Ell Potter, Fiona Hardingham
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Penniless and stranded in France after a bid to escape her cruel uncle goes awry, Cornelia Shaw is far from the Parisian life of leisure she imagined. Desperate and out of options, she allows herself to be recruited to Napoleon’s Grande Armée. As a naturalist, her mysterious ability to heal any wound with herbal mixtures invites awe amongst the soldiers…and suspicion.
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Another great one from Ms. Fox
- By audrey melton on 04-11-24
By: Hester Fox
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Operation Wandering Soul
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award. Tired and overworked, surgical resident Richard Kraft finds his protective shell shattered when, along with his physiotherapist, he begins to view the children's ward of the hospital. Determined to give hope where there is none, the adults spin a desperate anthology of stories that promise restoration and escape.
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Poor performance
- By Amazon Customer on 03-16-24
By: Richard Powers
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Death Need Not Be Fatal
- By: Malachy McCourt, Brian McDonald
- Narrated by: Malachy McCourt
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the singles bar and was a pioneer in talk radio, a soap opera star, a best-selling author, a gold smuggler, a political activist, and a candidate for governor of the state of New York. It seems that the only two things he hasn't done are stick his head into a lion's mouth and die. Since he is allergic to cats, he decided to write about the great hereafter and answer the question on most minds: What's so great about it anyhow?
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What a life lived and shared!
- By Lili on 06-19-17
By: Malachy McCourt, and others
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Family Reunion
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby, Whitney Dykhouse
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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A longtime Nantucket resident is trying to make the best of a lonely summer. Her spirited granddaughter is learning what she wants out of life. Unforgettable surprises await them both in this magical, multigenerational novel from New York Times bestselling author Nancy Thayer.
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Great story, terrible narrator!
- By Julie H Medici on 07-01-21
By: Nancy Thayer
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The English Major
- By: Jim Harrison
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Newly divorced and robbed of his farm by his real-estate shark of an ex-wife, 60-something Cliff is off on a road trip across America, on a mission to rename all the states and state birds and redeem them from the banal names men have given them.Cliff's adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high-school teaching days 20-some years before, to a snake farm in Arizona owned by an old classmate, and into the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer.
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A picaresque novel for baby boomers
- By SW Clemens on 12-02-08
By: Jim Harrison
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The Lincoln Highway
- A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel)
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
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I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
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The Good Shepherd
- By: C.S. Forester
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A convoy of 37 merchant ships is ploughing through icy, submarine-infested North Atlantic seas during the most critical days of World War II, when the German submarines had the upper hand and Allied shipping was suffering heavy losses. In charge is Commander George Krause, an untested veteran of the US Navy. Hounded by a wolf pack of German U-boats, he faces 48 hours of desperate peril trapped the bridge of the ship. Exhausted beyond measure, he must make countless and terrible decisions as he leads his small fighting force against the relentless U-boats.
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The Good Shepherd
- By BookReader on 07-16-20
By: C.S. Forester
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A Piece of the World
- A Novel
- By: Christina Baker Kline
- Narrated by: Polly Stone
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family's remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than 20 years, she was host to and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the 20th century.
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Wyeth's Vision Comes to Life
- By Poppy on 03-04-17
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The Restless Wave
- A Novel of the United States Navy (Scott Bradley James, Book 1)
- By: Admiral James Stavridis USN
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Scott Bradley James arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, as a plebe in the class of 1941 without a terribly good idea why he wants to be a naval officer, other than that his father was a sailor, and he wants to see the world, whatever that means. Scott and his roommate become fast friends, and, after surviving scrapes of their own making, the two fetch up at Pearl Harbor. War is brewing, and their class has graduated early. They have been sent to battle stations.
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A fine story, well told by this talented officer!
- By N. Carey on 01-25-25
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The Oregon Trail
- A New American Journey
- By: Rinker Buck
- Narrated by: Rinker Buck
- Length: 16 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In the best-selling tradition of Bill Bryson and Tony Horwitz, Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail is a major work of participatory history: an epic account of traveling the entire 2,000-mile length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way, in a covered wagon with a team of mules - which hasn't been done in a century - that also tells the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.
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An author does not a good narrator make
- By C. Davis on 07-03-15
By: Rinker Buck
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Black Ops
- The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior
- By: Ric Prado
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Enrique Prado found himself in his first firefight at age seven. The son of a middle-class Cuban family caught in the midst of the Castro Revolution, his family fled their war-torn home for the hope of a better life in America. Fifty years later, the Cuban refugee retired from the Central Intelligence Agency as the CIA equivalent of a two-star general. Black Ops is the story of Ric’s legendary career that spanned two eras, the Cold War and the Age of Terrorism.
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Impressive and Inspiring!
- By medardo on 03-12-22
By: Ric Prado
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The Shadow of War
- A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis
- By: Jeff Shaara
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1961, the new president John F. Kennedy, inherited an ill-conceived, poorly executed invasion of Cuba that failed miserably and set in motion the events that put the U.S. and the Soviet Union on a collision course that nearly started a war that would have enveloped much of the world. Extensively researched and vividly imagined, The Shadow of War brings to life the many threads that lead to the building crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1962.
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The Experience
- By Greg Taylor on 12-29-24
By: Jeff Shaara
Creative writing
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Great Book / Wonderful Story
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I have no words…
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Pleasant surprise
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Great story. Excellent audiobook.
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A great yarn
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If you are not offended by notions like beauty, honor and virtue, you will find this book courageous and fulfilling.
fearless and beautiful
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The detail was there, but not too much. The writing descriptive and satisfying, the character development exactly as I like it, and the presentation excellent. 5 stars in my world.
Exciting and satisfying
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Spellbinding
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Very good story
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