The Shadow of the Empire
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Narrated by:
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David Shih
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By:
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Qiu Xiaolong
About this listen
The legendary Judge Dee Renjie investigates a high-profile murder case in this intriguing companion novel to Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder set in seventh-century China.
Judge Dee Renjie, Empress Wu's newly appointed Imperial Circuit Supervisor for the Tang Empire, is visiting provinces surrounding the grand capital of Chang'an. One night a knife is thrown through his window with a cryptic note attached: "A high-flying dragon will have something to regret!"
Minutes after the ominous warning appears, Judge Dee is approached by an emissary of Internal Minister Wu, Empress Wu's nephew. Minister Wu wants Judge Dee to investigate a high-profile murder supposedly committed by the well-known poetess and courtesan, Xuanji, who locals believe is possessed by the spirit of a black fox. Why is Minister Wu interested in Xuanji? Despite Xuanji confessing to the murder, is there more to the case than first appears?
With the mysterious warning and a fierce power struggle playing out at the imperial court, Judge Dee knows he must tread carefully....
©2022 Qiu Xiaolong (P)2021 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In 1921, the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two staff are found in a manor house in Surrey. The police have put the murders down to a violent robbery, but Detective Inspector Madden from Scotland Yard has his own suspicions. In the meantime the killer is plotting his second strike.
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New Mystery Written in 1920's Style-What A Thrill!
- By Nancy J on 06-27-12
By: Rennie Airth
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Heat and Dust
- By: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
- Narrated by: Julie Christie
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1923 the beautiful, spoiled, and bored Olivia, married to Douglas and his career in the Indian Civil Service, outrages the English and Indian communities by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, Douglas’s granddaughter, armed with Olivia’s letters, goes back to the heat and dust and squalor of the bazaars to find out for herself how Olivia could have been so affected by India that she turned her back on her own country.
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Short, Rich Novel
- By David P on 01-23-22
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The Silver Pigs
- A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery
- By: Lindsey Davis
- Narrated by: Christian Rodska
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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When Marcus Didius Falco encounters the young and very pretty Sosia Camillina in the Forum, he senses immediately that there is something amiss. When she confesses that she is fleeing for her life, Falco offers to help her and, in doing so, gets himself mixed up in a deadly plot involving stolen ingots, dangerous and dark political machinations, and, most hazardous of all, one Helena Justina - a brash, indomitable senator's daughter connected to the very traitors that Falco has sworn to expose.
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Completely brillant
- By Lynn on 01-25-20
By: Lindsey Davis
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A Rising Man
- By: Abir Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Malk Williams
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Captain Sam Wyndham, former Scotland Yard detective, is a new arrival to Calcutta. Desperately seeking a fresh start after his experiences during the Great War, Wyndham has been recruited to head up a new post in the police force. He is immediately overwhelmed by the heady vibrancy of the tropical city, but with barely a moment to acclimatize or to deal with the ghosts that still haunt him, Wyndham is caught up in a murder investigation that threatens to destabilize a city already teetering on the brink of political insurgency.
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Warning - Same book was issued May 5, 2016
- By Katharine on 07-04-17
By: Abir Mukherjee
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And Only to Deceive
- Lady Emily, Book 1
- By: Tasha Alexander
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily's dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly.
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Tiresome
- By nkevinsc on 03-05-15
By: Tasha Alexander
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The Garden of Evening Mists
- By: Tan Twan Eng
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 15 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp.
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The best
- By Susan Gardner Bowers on 03-11-13
By: Tan Twan Eng
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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but 10, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.
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The position of the feet during reading...
- By literate rose on 02-09-18
By: Italo Calvino
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The Italian Secretary
- By: Caleb Carr
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of the Alienist series returns with a chilling elaboration on the Sherlock Holmes canon, as the famed detective investigates a pair of gruesome murders, which cast an otherworldly shadow as far as Queen Victoria herself.
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A True Delight for the Holmes Enthusiast
- By Sagar on 06-03-05
By: Caleb Carr
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Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter
- By: Richard Parks
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In an ancient Japan where the incursions of gods, ghosts, and demons into the living world is an everyday event, an impoverished nobleman named Yamada no Goji makes his living as a demon hunter for hire. With the occasional assistance of the reprobate exorcist Kenji, whatever the difficulty - ogres, demons, fox-spirits - for a price Yamada will do what needs to be done, even and especially if the solution to the problem isn’t as simple as the edge of a sword.
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Demon Hunter mini stories
- By mary on 01-29-15
By: Richard Parks
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The Unsettled Dust
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Aickman, the supreme master of the supernatural, brings together eight stories in which strange things happen that the reader is unable to predict. His characters are often lonely and middle-aged, but all have the same thing in common: they are brought to the brink of an abyss that shows how terrifyingly fragile our piece of mind actually is. 'The Unsettled Dust', 'The House of the Russians', 'No Stronger Than a Flower', 'The Cicerones' and 'Ravissante' first appeared in the Sub Rosa collection in 1968, but the stories were published together as The Unsettled Dust in 1990.
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Perfectly read, sheds new light on this work
- By James Townsend on 04-10-17
By: Robert Aickman
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My Beautiful Enemy
- By: Sherry Thomas
- Narrated by: Charlotte Anne Dore
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Catherine Blade's uncommon beauty and daring have taken her far in the world, but she still doesn't have the freedom to live life as she chooses. Finally given the chance to earn her independence, who should be standing in her way but the only man she's ever loved - the only person to ever betray her. Despite the scars Catherine left him, Captain Leighton Atwood has never been able to forget the mysterious girl who once so thoroughly captivated him.
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my least favorite from this author, and still good
- By Christina on 09-04-14
By: Sherry Thomas
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Sea of Poppies
- Ibis Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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At the heart of this vibrant saga is an immense ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight China's vicious 19th-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.
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ignorance may be bliss
- By Evelyn M Kloepper on 07-27-09
By: Amitav Ghosh