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The Rat Catcher
- A Love Story
- Narrated by: Alan Devally
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Rat Catcher: A Love Story is a mischievous, fast-paced fable told with an irrepressible love for life, in all its marvellous forms, from bestselling author, Kim Kelly.
In the sweltering summer of 1900, young wharf labourer Patrick O’Reilly is down on his luck in the slums of Sydney and homesick for Tralee. When a deadly outbreak of plague descends on the city, O’Reilly’s daydreaming mind is miles away—in the golden hair and kindly, confident air of a girl called Rosie Hughes.
Just as he’s wondering why any girl would want a no-hoper like him, opportunity knocks with the offer of a job as a rat catcher working for the city’s Plague Department, containing the spread of disease. But the job will bring him a lot more than a pay rise and a swift education on traps and poisons.
In the Public Lending Library, on the top floor of the Queen Victoria Building, above the bustling centre of Sydney, he comes face-to-face with a legendary rat called Old Scratch who will change the way he understands himself and the world forever.
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Overall
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Mags was once an enslaved orphan living a harsh life in the mines, until the King's Own Herald discovered his talent and trained him as a spy. Now a Herald in his own right, at the newly established Heralds' Collegium, Mags has found a supportive family, including his Companion Dallen.Although normally a Herald in his first year of Whites would be sent off on circuit, Mags is needed close to home for his abilities as a spy and his powerful Mindspeech gift.
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Great story !!
- By T on 10-19-14
By: Mercedes Lackey
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Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Shannon McManus, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
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MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
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Midnight Blue
- By: Simone van der Vlugt
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Amsterdam 1654: a dangerous secret threatens to destroy a young widow's new life. Following the sudden death of her husband, 25-year-old Catrin leaves her small village and takes a job as housekeeper to the successful Van Nulandt merchant family. Amsterdam is a city at the peak of its powers: science and art are flourishing, and Dutch ships bring back exotic riches from the Far East. When a figure from her past threatens her new life, Catrin flees to Delft. There, her painting talent earns her a chance as a pottery painter.
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Hard to Be a Woman in 17th Century Holland
- By Cariola on 06-16-17
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Shades of Grey
- A Novel
- By: Jasper Fforde
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Eddie Russett has no ambition to be anything other than a loyal drone of the Collective. With his better-than-average red perception, he could well marry Constance Oxblood and inherit the string works; he may even have enough red perception to make prefect. For Eddie, life looks colorful. Life looks good. But everything changes when he moves with his father, a respected swatchman, to East Carmine. There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society.
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Slow, weird... but a good set-up for sequels.
- By Roger on 01-09-10
By: Jasper Fforde
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Annie Dunne
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah’s small farm running. Suddenly, Annie’s young niece and nephew are left in their care. Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
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Splendid
- By Shady on 06-21-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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The Fire Rose
- By: Mercedes Lackey
- Narrated by: Kate Black-Regan
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Accepting employment as a governess after hard times hit her family, medieval scholar Rosalind Hawkins is surprised when she learns that her mysterious employer has no children and only wants her to read to him through a speaking tube.
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Great story, poorly presented
- By Che on 02-26-10
By: Mercedes Lackey
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Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
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Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
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Journey to the End of the Night
- By: Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.
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Miserable Ride with Cynic Supreme
- By W Perry Hall on 03-15-17
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The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination
- Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius
- By: John Joseph Adams - editor
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Mary Robinette Kowal, Justine Eyre
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.
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HAND DANCING
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-30-15
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Lights Out Liverpool
- By: Maureen Lee
- Narrated by: Maggie Ollerenshaw
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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As Britain stands alone against a monstrous enemy, the inhabitants of Pearl Street face hardship and heartbreak with courage and humour. The war touches each of them in a different way: for Annie Poulson, a widow, it means never-ending worry when her twin boys are called up and sent to France; Sheila Reilly's husband, Cal, faces the terror of U-Boat attacks; Eileen Costello is liberated from a bitter, loveless marriage when her husband is sent to Egypt.
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Wonderful
- By Tansy Adderley on 10-03-18
By: Maureen Lee
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A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
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Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
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Dreamers of the Day
- A Novel
- By: Mary Doria Russell
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as an historic Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - enters into the company of the historic luminaries.
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Little Big Woman
- By W.Denis on 10-02-08
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South Riding
- By: Winifred Holtby
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred's own mother).
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Worth Revisiting
- By Ilana on 11-04-12
By: Winifred Holtby