The Sea Elephants
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Vikas Adam
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By:
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Shastri Akella
About this listen
For fans of Shuggie Bain and A Burning, a queer coming-of-age novel set in 1990s India, about a young man who joins a traveling street theater troupe, seeking to outrun the dark secrets of his past
"An exquisite novel destined to be a classic.”―Eric Nguyen, author of Things We Lost to the Water
Shagun knows he will never be the kind of son his father demands. After the sudden deaths of his beloved twin sisters, Shagun flees his own guilt, his mother’s grief, and his father’s violent disapproval by enrolling at an all-boys boarding school. But he doesn’t find true belonging until he encounters a traveling theater troupe performing the Hindu myths of his childhood.
Welcomed by the other storytellers, Shagun thrives, easily embodying mortals and gods, men and women, and living on the road, where his father can’t catch him. When Shagun meets Marc, a charming photographer, he seems to have found the love he always longed for, too. But not even Marc can save him from his lingering shame, nor his father’s ever-present threat to send him to a conversion center. As Shagun’s past begins to engulf him once again, he must decide if he is strong enough to face what he fears most, and to boldly claim his own happiness.
Utterly immersive and spellbinding, The Sea Elephants is both dark and beautiful, harrowing and triumphant. An ode to the redemptive joys of art, Shastri Akella’s debut novel is a celebration of hard-won love—of others and for ourselves.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
©2022 Shastri Akella (P)2022 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“By turns tender and brutal, The Sea Elephants navigates the tumultuous waters of grief, guilt, and love with grace and precision. Akella has written an exquisite novel destined to be a classic.”—Eric Nguyen, author of Things We Lost to the Water
“Akella’s debut novel is a compelling, beautifully assured and intense coming-of-age story about the wounding ferocity and terrible innocence of desire, and the resilience and hard-won wisdom by which love comes to know itself.”—Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins
“Akella’s powerful debut novel crackles with a magical force. This redemptive tale tracks Shagun Mathur through seaside villages, boarding schools, traveling drama troops, and prison-like re-education centers, as if Dickens had trained his eye on 1990s India and chosen a young, guilt-ridden, love-seeking gay young man as his protagonist. Both harrowing and heartwarming, Akella’s novel is a powerful narrative forged at the intersection of art and being.”—Sabina Murray, author of Valiant Gentlemen and The Human Zoo
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In twelfth century, Persia, clever and dreamy Shaherazade stumbles on the Malik’s beloved wife entwined with a lover in a sun-dappled courtyard. When Shaherazade recounts her first tale, the story of this infidelity, to the Malik, she sets the Seljuk Empire on fire. Enraged at his wife’s betrayal, the once-gentle Malik beheads her. But when that killing does not quench his anger, the Malik begins to marry and behead a new bride each night. Furious at the murders, his province seethes on rebellion’s edge.
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Stunning imagery
- By Amazon Customer on 06-18-24
By: Jamila Ahmed
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Above the Salt
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Vaz
- Narrated by: Gisela Chípe
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
John Alves, son of a famous Presbyterian martyr on the Portuguese island of Madeira, spends his childhood in jail and in poverty. When he meets Mary Freitas—though the adopted daughter of a master botanist, her true lineage is the subject of dangerous rumor—a spark kindles a lasting bond. But soon their families must confront the rising blood tide of warfare between Catholics and Protestants. Fleeing with only what they can carry, John and Mary are separated and arrive at different times and places in a rapidly growing and changing mid-nineteenth-century Illinois.
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The generational stories, and the Portuguese immigrant story. Powerful.
- By Shape Man on 08-08-24
By: Katherine Vaz
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The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
- A Novel
- By: Paterson Joseph
- Narrated by: Paterson Joseph
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It’s 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man. Charles Ignatius Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse, and his main ally—a kindly duke who taught him to write—is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone. So how does the same Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the king, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain, and lead the fight to end slavery? Through every moment of this rich, exuberant tale, Sancho forges ahead to see how much he can achieve in one short life.
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A captivating account of a life well lived.
- By Tia Wallace on 01-24-24
By: Paterson Joseph
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King of the Armadillos
- A Novel
- By: Wendy Chin-Tanner
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx–the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother—to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville. At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee.
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That he had a better life at Carvel than home.
- By Mary Dell on 03-24-24
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The Peach Seed
- A Novel
- By: Anita Gail Jones
- Narrated by: Anita Gail Jones
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a routine trip to the Piggly Wiggly in Albany, Georgia, widower Fletcher Dukes smells a familiar perfume, then sees a tall woman the color of papershell pecans with a strawberry birthmark on the nape of her neck. He knows immediately that she is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Their bond, built on county fairs, sit-ins, and marches, once seemed a sure and forever thing. But their marriage plans were disrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent.
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Great book about traditions
- By T. Nicholson on 01-23-24
By: Anita Gail Jones
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Sally Brady's Italian Adventure
- A Novel
- By: Christina Lynch
- Narrated by: Elise Roth
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A good deed leaves Sally stranded in wartime Italy, brandishing a biting wit, a fake passport, and an elastic sense of right and wrong. To save her friends and find her way home through a land of besieged castles and villas, Sally must combat tragedy with comedy, tie up pompous bureaucrats in their own red tape, force the cruel to be kind, and unravel the mystery, weight, and meaning of family.
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Funny, entertaining, a great summer read!
- By Amy Brown on 06-19-23
By: Christina Lynch
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Every Rising Sun
- A Novel
- By: Jamila Ahmed
- Narrated by: Sulin Hasso
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In twelfth century, Persia, clever and dreamy Shaherazade stumbles on the Malik’s beloved wife entwined with a lover in a sun-dappled courtyard. When Shaherazade recounts her first tale, the story of this infidelity, to the Malik, she sets the Seljuk Empire on fire. Enraged at his wife’s betrayal, the once-gentle Malik beheads her. But when that killing does not quench his anger, the Malik begins to marry and behead a new bride each night. Furious at the murders, his province seethes on rebellion’s edge.
-
-
Stunning imagery
- By Amazon Customer on 06-18-24
By: Jamila Ahmed
-
Above the Salt
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Vaz
- Narrated by: Gisela Chípe
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Alves, son of a famous Presbyterian martyr on the Portuguese island of Madeira, spends his childhood in jail and in poverty. When he meets Mary Freitas—though the adopted daughter of a master botanist, her true lineage is the subject of dangerous rumor—a spark kindles a lasting bond. But soon their families must confront the rising blood tide of warfare between Catholics and Protestants. Fleeing with only what they can carry, John and Mary are separated and arrive at different times and places in a rapidly growing and changing mid-nineteenth-century Illinois.
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-
The generational stories, and the Portuguese immigrant story. Powerful.
- By Shape Man on 08-08-24
By: Katherine Vaz
-
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
- A Novel
- By: Paterson Joseph
- Narrated by: Paterson Joseph
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man. Charles Ignatius Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse, and his main ally—a kindly duke who taught him to write—is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone. So how does the same Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the king, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain, and lead the fight to end slavery? Through every moment of this rich, exuberant tale, Sancho forges ahead to see how much he can achieve in one short life.
-
-
A captivating account of a life well lived.
- By Tia Wallace on 01-24-24
By: Paterson Joseph
-
King of the Armadillos
- A Novel
- By: Wendy Chin-Tanner
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx–the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother—to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville. At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee.
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That he had a better life at Carvel than home.
- By Mary Dell on 03-24-24
-
The Peach Seed
- A Novel
- By: Anita Gail Jones
- Narrated by: Anita Gail Jones
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a routine trip to the Piggly Wiggly in Albany, Georgia, widower Fletcher Dukes smells a familiar perfume, then sees a tall woman the color of papershell pecans with a strawberry birthmark on the nape of her neck. He knows immediately that she is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Their bond, built on county fairs, sit-ins, and marches, once seemed a sure and forever thing. But their marriage plans were disrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent.
-
-
Great book about traditions
- By T. Nicholson on 01-23-24
By: Anita Gail Jones
-
Sally Brady's Italian Adventure
- A Novel
- By: Christina Lynch
- Narrated by: Elise Roth
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A good deed leaves Sally stranded in wartime Italy, brandishing a biting wit, a fake passport, and an elastic sense of right and wrong. To save her friends and find her way home through a land of besieged castles and villas, Sally must combat tragedy with comedy, tie up pompous bureaucrats in their own red tape, force the cruel to be kind, and unravel the mystery, weight, and meaning of family.
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Funny, entertaining, a great summer read!
- By Amy Brown on 06-19-23
By: Christina Lynch
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Maddalena and the Dark
- A Novel
- By: Julia Fine
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls’ orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena. After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known.
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meh.
- By Raul A on 08-07-23
By: Julia Fine
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Idlewild
- A Novel
- By: James Frankie Thomas
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers. For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext.
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Loved every single part of it
- By Casey on 03-13-24
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Return to Valetto
- A Novel
- By: Dominic Smith
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village—and a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II—centuries of earthquakes, landslides, and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents remain, including the widows Serafino—three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother—who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns. But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers.
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Great Start - Lost Interest
- By NK on 09-10-24
By: Dominic Smith
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The First Bright Thing
- By: J.R. Dawson
- Narrated by: Petrea Burchard, Tim Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ringmaster—Rin, to those who know her best—can jump to different moments in time as easily as her wife, Odette, soars from bar to bar on the trapeze. And the circus they lead is a rare home and safe haven for magical misfits and outcasts, known as Sparks. With the world still reeling from World War I, Rin and her troupe—the Circus of the Fantasticals—travel the midwest, offering a single night of enchantment and respite to all who step into their Big Top. But threats come at Rin from all sides.
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Like a balm to your soul
- By Josh Curfman on 07-22-23
By: J.R. Dawson
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Convergence Problems
- By: Wole Talabi
- Narrated by: Ben Arogundade
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Nommo award nominated author of Shigidi and The Brass Head Of Obalufon comes a stunning new collection of stories that investigate the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, for knowledge, for justice. The sixteen stories of Convergence Problems, which include work published for the first time in this collection, rare stories, and recently acclaimed work, showcase Talabi at his creative best: playful and profound, exciting and experimental, always interesting.
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A Very Unique and Powerful Collection
- By David on 03-12-24
By: Wole Talabi
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Daughter of the Bone Forest
- By: Jasmine Skye
- Narrated by: Jeremy Carlisle Parker, Lindsey Dorcus
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosy is a bone familiar, gifted with the power to shift into animals marked with exposed bone. She spends most of her days in the magical Bone Forest, caring for her feral grandmother and hiding her powers to avoid conscription by the Witch King’s army. Until the day that Princess Shaw, a witch known as Death’s Heir, visits the Forest. When Rosy saves Shaw’s life, the princess offers her the chance to attend the prestigious school, Witch Hall, as payment. Though Rosy is wary of Shaw’s intentions, she cannot pass up the opportunity to find the cure for her grandmother’s affliction.
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This book nearly became my favorite story of the year, that cliffhanger though 🪦
- By Ciera aka @bookameme on 04-12-24
By: Jasmine Skye
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Temple Folk
- By: Aaliyah Bilal
- Narrated by: Amir Abdullah, Chanté McCormick, Soneela Nankani, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics, and sexuality in America. The ten “beautiful and vivid” (Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author) stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born.
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Insightful
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-24
By: Aaliyah Bilal
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Holiday Country
- A Novel
- By: İnci Atrek
- Narrated by: Ayse Babahan
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Ada adores spending every summer in a Turkish seaside town with her mother and grandmother at the family villa. The glittering waters, endless olive groves, and her spirited friends make it easy to leave her idle life in California behind. But no matter how much Ada feels she belongs to the country where her mother grew up, deep down, her connection to the culture feels as fleeting as the seasons. When Levent, a mysterious man from her mother’s past, shows up in their town, Ada can’t help but imagine a different future for her mother—one that promises a return to home, to love, to happiness.
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Great book.
- By ZAA on 02-12-24
By: İnci Atrek
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Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
- A Novel
- By: Kathleen Rooney
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
It's the last day of 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish is about to take a walk. As she traverses a grittier Manhattan, a city anxious after an attack by a still-at-large subway vigilante, she encounters bartenders, bodega clerks, chauffeurs, security guards, bohemians, criminals, children, parents, and parents to be in surprising moments of generosity and grace. While she strolls Lillian recalls a long and eventful life that included a brief reign as the highest paid advertising woman in America - a career cut short by marriage, motherhood, divorce, and a breakdown.
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Lillian takes a stroll down memory lane!
- By Iris Pereyra on 01-29-17
By: Kathleen Rooney
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The Secrets of Hartwood Hall
- A Novel
- By: Katie Lumsden
- Narrated by: Olivia Vinall
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
It’s 1852 and Margaret Lennox, a young widow, attempts to escape the shadows of her past by taking a position as governess to an only child, Louis, at an isolated country house in the west of England. But Margaret soon starts to feel that something isn’t quite right. There are strange figures in the dark, tensions between servants, and an abandoned east wing. Even stranger is the local gossip surrounding Mrs. Eversham, Louis’s widowed mother, who is deeply distrusted in the village.
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ugh
- By CFrame on 04-20-23
By: Katie Lumsden
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After the Forest
- By: Kell Woods
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in Greta's ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you've ever tasted. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat.
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Fantastic!
- By Brazilla A. Leonard on 11-07-23
By: Kell Woods
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Again and Again
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Evison
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many—all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it.
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Nothing is What it Seems
- By Matt on 11-07-23
By: Jonathan Evison
What listeners say about The Sea Elephants
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- CCC
- 02-24-24
Compelling, but very graphic story
This book has so many things going for it. I was hooked right from the start. Set in India, it starts as a coming of age story for a queer young man, Shagun. Tragedy shadows and follows him. The writing was poetic, the story engaging. When Mark comes along, it turns into a sweeping gay romance that was heartbreakingly beautiful. Then the last third of the book made me go, huh? I'm a gay man & certainly not a prude. While the graphic sexual descriptions were an essential part of the story, the volume of them was too much. And Shagun's hesitations & prevarications & intense self analysis was irritating at first, then maddening at it went on & on & on. I was muttering to myself, maybe the title should be Confessions of A Power Bottom. That being said, this novel is richly layered, beautifully narrated & opens an eye into Indian culture and mythology. I agree with others who have said it should have a trigger warning for its scenes of sexual assault. Overall, it's well worth reading, if you can stomach the intense parts. I look forward to what the author writes next.
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- Btbush2006
- 03-09-24
An amazing case study on gender and religion
This book spoke to so many different facets of me. Familial trauma, religious trauma, relationship woes, and not feeling completely at home in my own body. While I was never forced to undergo the same level of horrors that the main character was, it is truly amazing how many similarities can be pulled across oceans and decades. This is such an important story that NEEDS to be heard.
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