
The Sweetest Fruits
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
3 months free
Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Cassandra Campbell
-
Lisa Flanagan
-
Adenrele Ojo
-
Emily Woo Zeller
-
By:
-
Monique Truong
About this listen
"A sublime, many-voiced novel of voyage and reinvention." (Anthony Marra)
"[Truong] imagines the extraordinary lives of three women who loved an extraordinary man [and] creates distinct, engaging voices for these women." (Kirkus Reviews)
A Greek woman tells of how she willed herself out of her father's cloistered house, married an Irish officer in the British Army, and came to Ireland with her two-year-old son in 1852, only to be forced to leave without him soon after. An African-American woman, born into slavery on a Kentucky plantation, makes her way to Cincinnati after the Civil War to work as a boarding-house cook, where in 1872 she meets and marries an up-and-coming newspaper reporter. In Matsue, Japan, in 1891, a former samurai's daughter is introduced to a newly arrived English teacher, and becomes the mother of his four children and his unsung literary collaborator.
The lives of writers can often best be understood through the eyes of those who nurtured them and made their work possible. In The Sweetest Fruits, these three women tell the story of their time with Lafcadio Hearn, a globetrotting writer best known for his books about Meiji-era Japan. In their own unorthodox ways, these women are also intrepid travelers and explorers. Their accounts witness Hearn's remarkable life but also seek to witness their own existence and luminous will to live unbounded by gender, race, and the mores of their time. Each is a gifted storyteller with her own precise reason for sharing her story, and together their voices offer a revealing, often contradictory portrait of Hearn. With brilliant sensitivity and an unstinting eye, Truong illuminates the women's tenacity and their struggles in a novel that circumnavigates the globe in the search for love, family, home, and belonging.
©2019 Monique Truong (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Olga Dies Dreaming
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, Armando Riesco
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo” are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular Congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
-
-
Funny, romantic, serious, substantial—all of these things and more
- By Diana on 01-07-22
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
-
Bitter in the Mouth
- By: Monique Truong
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the cruel, mysterious last words that Linda’s grandmother ever says to her.
-
-
"Tasting Words" made this hard to hear!
- By Kate Anderson on 11-06-11
By: Monique Truong
-
This Time Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Emma Straub
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday.
-
-
Loved!
- By AE on 05-25-22
By: Emma Straub
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Passenger
- By: Cormac McCarthy
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is three in the morning when Bobby Western plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the site are the pilot’s bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.
-
-
It’s a new Cormac McCarthy
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-22
By: Cormac McCarthy
-
Three Souls
- A Novel
- By: Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We have three souls, or so I'd been told. But only in death could I confirm this.... So begins the haunting and captivating tale, set in 1935 China, of the ghost of a young woman named Leiyin, who watches her own funeral from above and wonders why she is being denied entry to the afterlife. Beside her are three souls - stern and scholarly yang; impulsive, romantic yin; and wise, shining hun - who will guide her toward understanding. She must, they tell her, make amends.
-
-
Very different but compelling point of view.
- By Kevin Wickline on 06-08-23
By: Janie Chang
-
Olga Dies Dreaming
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, Armando Riesco
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo” are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular Congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
-
-
Funny, romantic, serious, substantial—all of these things and more
- By Diana on 01-07-22
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
-
Bitter in the Mouth
- By: Monique Truong
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the cruel, mysterious last words that Linda’s grandmother ever says to her.
-
-
"Tasting Words" made this hard to hear!
- By Kate Anderson on 11-06-11
By: Monique Truong
-
This Time Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Emma Straub
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday.
-
-
Loved!
- By AE on 05-25-22
By: Emma Straub
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Passenger
- By: Cormac McCarthy
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is three in the morning when Bobby Western plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the site are the pilot’s bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.
-
-
It’s a new Cormac McCarthy
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-22
By: Cormac McCarthy
-
Three Souls
- A Novel
- By: Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We have three souls, or so I'd been told. But only in death could I confirm this.... So begins the haunting and captivating tale, set in 1935 China, of the ghost of a young woman named Leiyin, who watches her own funeral from above and wonders why she is being denied entry to the afterlife. Beside her are three souls - stern and scholarly yang; impulsive, romantic yin; and wise, shining hun - who will guide her toward understanding. She must, they tell her, make amends.
-
-
Very different but compelling point of view.
- By Kevin Wickline on 06-08-23
By: Janie Chang
-
Small Things Like These
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
-
-
Charming and Inspiring
- By David P on 09-05-22
By: Claire Keegan
-
Marilla of Green Gables
- A Novel
- By: Sarah McCoy
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bold, heartfelt tale of life at Green Gables...before Anne: A marvelously entertaining and moving historical novel, set in rural Prince Edward Island in the 19th century, that imagines the young life of spinster Marilla Cuthbert and the choices that will open her life to the possibility of heartbreak - and unimaginable greatness. Plucky and ambitious, Marilla Cuthbert is 13 years old when her world is turned upside down. Her beloved mother dies in childbirth, and Marilla suddenly must bear the responsibilities of a farm wife.
-
-
feels like anne with an e fanfiction
- By Amazon Customer on 04-28-21
By: Sarah McCoy
-
Good Behaviour
- A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick – Booker Prize Gems
- By: Molly Keane
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires. This elegant and allusive novel established Molly Keane as the natural successor to Jean Rhys.
-
-
Great all around
- By Kindle Customer on 07-18-24
By: Molly Keane
-
Dragon Springs Road
- A Novel
- By: Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jialing is only seven years old in 1908, when she is abandoned in the courtyard of a once-lavish estate near Shanghai. Jialing is zazhong - Eurasian - and faces a lifetime of contempt from both Chinese and Europeans. Without her mother's protection, she can survive only if the estate's new owners, the Yang family, agree to take her in.
-
-
Story as narration is on point!
- By Anonymous User on 06-21-20
By: Janie Chang
-
The Woman Warrior
- Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
- By: Maxine Hong Kingston
- Narrated by: Ming-Na
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed author Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior broke new ground when it was first published 35 years ago, weaving autobiography, history, folklore, and fantasy in to a candid and revelatory story about the daughter of Chinese immigrants in mid-20th century California.
-
-
Hilariously Vicious; Touchingly Empathetic
- By Kenneth on 08-28-11
-
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating, but her brain is still active - for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life - and the lives of others, outcasts like her.
-
-
A word of caution before purchasing or listening
- By Esther V. Skandunas on 06-18-22
By: Elif Shafak
-
Lessons
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon McBurney
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
-
-
Narrator Simon McBurney gets my 100% rating
- By Peggy M on 09-26-22
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Good Left Undone
- A Novel
- By: Adriana Trigiani
- Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan, Lisa Flanagan, Edoardo Ballerini, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew....
-
-
Best one yet!
- By Sande on 05-01-22
By: Adriana Trigiani
-
The Signature of All Things
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker - a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia.
-
-
Don't miss this one
- By Molly-o on 12-27-13
-
Alias Grace
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood, Sarah Gadon
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1843, and Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember.
-
-
Beautiful and Intense Story
- By Aparries on 11-27-17
By: Margaret Atwood
-
The Marriage of Opposites
- By: Alice Hoffman
- Narrated by: Gloria Reuben, Tina Benko, Santino Fontana, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel's salvation is their maid Adelle's belief in her strengths and her deep, lifelong friendship with Jestine, Adelle's daughter. But Rachel's life is not her own.
-
-
Intoxicating and Complex Journey
- By Mel on 09-02-15
By: Alice Hoffman
-
The Valley of Amazement
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Joyce Bean, Amy Tan
- Length: 24 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan." Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the worlds of East and West - until she is able to merge her two halves, empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who she is.
-
-
Just could NOT get past the ugliness
- By Pamela J on 11-25-13
By: Amy Tan
Critic reviews
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
Winner of the Binghamton Center for Writers’ John Gardner Fiction Prize
"A marvelous mixture of fact and imagination.... Truong’s lush style is on gorgeous display in these pages, her imagery evoking hidden emotional depths.... While the lives, loves and adventures of Lafcadio Hearn hold center stage in this novel, these are set off by a rich brocade of social critiques - of slavery, colonization and the repression of women. With great generosity and compassion, Truong explores the difference between writing and telling stories, with the question of who gets to speak and who remains silent." (Diana Abu-Jaber, The Washington Post)
"A delicate, impressionistic tale.... Truong is exploring personal memory in all its creative and contradictory subjectivity.... [The Sweetest Fruits] is propelled not by action but by the retrospective piecing together that happens once a relationship is over. Spurred by nostalgia, regret, longing and anger, each woman examines her memories.... As Setsu observes, 'to tell another’s story is to bring him to life,' but here it’s the women who achieve that feat rather than the man who connected them." (Priya Parmar, The New York Times Book Review)
"I've been addicted to Truong's writing ever since her debut, The Book of Salt, a work of historical fiction incorporating real people that felt - unlike much of that genre - lush, invigorating, and real. Her third novel fictionalizes Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn but through the eyes of only his mother and his two wives - one a freed American slave, the other his Japanese translator." (Boris Kachka, New York Magazine)
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie
- By: Rachel Linden
- Narrated by: Katie Koster
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lolly Blanchard's life only seems to give her lemons. Ten years ago, after her mother’s tragic death, she broke up with her first love and abandoned her dream of opening a restaurant in order to keep her family’s struggling Seattle diner afloat and care for her younger sister and grieving father. Now, a decade later, she dutifully whips up the diner’s famous lemon meringue pies each morning while still pining for all she's lost. As Lolly’s thirty-third birthday approaches, her quirky great-aunt gives her a mysterious gift.
-
-
Terrible British Accent!
- By Anonymous User on 09-15-22
By: Rachel Linden
-
Animal Spirit
- Stories
- By: Francesca Marciano
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss, Edoardo Ballerini, Alex McKenna
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Centering us in Rome, but transporting us seamlessly into worlds as varied and exotic as they are emotionally real, these stories paint landscapes that are populated - vividly, hauntingly - by animals: from squawking, violent seagulls, to magical snakes, to a tiny dog on the side of a deserted road, to starlings circling the evening sky in exhilarating formation.
-
-
A MUST READ BOOK
- By eretz73 on 02-11-23
-
Aria
- A Novel
- By: Nazanine Hozar
- Narrated by: Neeky Dalir
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the 1950s in a restless Iran, a country rich in oil but deeply divided by class and religion. The government is unpopular and corrupt and under foreign sway. One night, an illiterate army driver hears the pitiful cry of a baby abandoned in an alley and menaced by ravenous wild dogs. He snatches up the child and takes her home, naming her Aria - the first step on an unlikely path from deprivation to privilege. Over the next two decades, the orphan girl acquires three mother figures whose secrets she will learn only much later.
By: Nazanine Hozar
-
Wunderland
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Cody Epstein
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once inseparable, Berlin teenagers Ilse Fischer and Renate Bauer find their friendship ripped apart by their nation’s abrupt swing into fascism. Ilse, a so-called Aryan, throws her lot in with the Nazi Party, while Renate sees her once-secure world dismantled by Adolf Hitler's race laws and then shattered by a shocking betrayal. Decades later, that same betrayal will upend the life of Ilse's daughter, Ava, as she discovers long-buried truths about her mother's past.
-
-
Amazing book
- By Paula Boudreault on 05-20-19
-
All Our Shimmering Skies
- A Novel
- By: Trent Dalton
- Narrated by: Ruby Rees
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Darwin, 1942. As Japanese bombs rain down on her hometown, newly orphaned Molly Hook looks to the skies and runs for her life. Inside a duffel bag, she carries a stone heart and a map that will lead her to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer whom she believes cursed her family. Accompanying her are the most unlikely traveling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress, and Yukio, a Japanese fighter pilot who’s abandoned his post. Messages from the skies above guide them towards treasure, but foes are close on their trail.
-
-
Gorgeous
- By Lolly Winston on 07-23-21
By: Trent Dalton
-
Smoke
- A Novel
- By: Dan Vyleta
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to a Victorian England unlike any other you have experienced before. Here, wicked thoughts (both harmless and hate-filled) appear in the air as telltale wisps of Smoke. Young Thomas Argyle, a son of aristocracy, has been sent to an elite boarding school. Here, he will be purged of Wickedness, for the wealthy do not Smoke.
-
-
Not for me
- By BikeVON on 09-03-16
By: Dan Vyleta
-
The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie
- By: Rachel Linden
- Narrated by: Katie Koster
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lolly Blanchard's life only seems to give her lemons. Ten years ago, after her mother’s tragic death, she broke up with her first love and abandoned her dream of opening a restaurant in order to keep her family’s struggling Seattle diner afloat and care for her younger sister and grieving father. Now, a decade later, she dutifully whips up the diner’s famous lemon meringue pies each morning while still pining for all she's lost. As Lolly’s thirty-third birthday approaches, her quirky great-aunt gives her a mysterious gift.
-
-
Terrible British Accent!
- By Anonymous User on 09-15-22
By: Rachel Linden
-
Animal Spirit
- Stories
- By: Francesca Marciano
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss, Edoardo Ballerini, Alex McKenna
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Centering us in Rome, but transporting us seamlessly into worlds as varied and exotic as they are emotionally real, these stories paint landscapes that are populated - vividly, hauntingly - by animals: from squawking, violent seagulls, to magical snakes, to a tiny dog on the side of a deserted road, to starlings circling the evening sky in exhilarating formation.
-
-
A MUST READ BOOK
- By eretz73 on 02-11-23
-
Aria
- A Novel
- By: Nazanine Hozar
- Narrated by: Neeky Dalir
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the 1950s in a restless Iran, a country rich in oil but deeply divided by class and religion. The government is unpopular and corrupt and under foreign sway. One night, an illiterate army driver hears the pitiful cry of a baby abandoned in an alley and menaced by ravenous wild dogs. He snatches up the child and takes her home, naming her Aria - the first step on an unlikely path from deprivation to privilege. Over the next two decades, the orphan girl acquires three mother figures whose secrets she will learn only much later.
By: Nazanine Hozar
-
Wunderland
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Cody Epstein
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once inseparable, Berlin teenagers Ilse Fischer and Renate Bauer find their friendship ripped apart by their nation’s abrupt swing into fascism. Ilse, a so-called Aryan, throws her lot in with the Nazi Party, while Renate sees her once-secure world dismantled by Adolf Hitler's race laws and then shattered by a shocking betrayal. Decades later, that same betrayal will upend the life of Ilse's daughter, Ava, as she discovers long-buried truths about her mother's past.
-
-
Amazing book
- By Paula Boudreault on 05-20-19
-
All Our Shimmering Skies
- A Novel
- By: Trent Dalton
- Narrated by: Ruby Rees
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Darwin, 1942. As Japanese bombs rain down on her hometown, newly orphaned Molly Hook looks to the skies and runs for her life. Inside a duffel bag, she carries a stone heart and a map that will lead her to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer whom she believes cursed her family. Accompanying her are the most unlikely traveling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress, and Yukio, a Japanese fighter pilot who’s abandoned his post. Messages from the skies above guide them towards treasure, but foes are close on their trail.
-
-
Gorgeous
- By Lolly Winston on 07-23-21
By: Trent Dalton
-
Smoke
- A Novel
- By: Dan Vyleta
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to a Victorian England unlike any other you have experienced before. Here, wicked thoughts (both harmless and hate-filled) appear in the air as telltale wisps of Smoke. Young Thomas Argyle, a son of aristocracy, has been sent to an elite boarding school. Here, he will be purged of Wickedness, for the wealthy do not Smoke.
-
-
Not for me
- By BikeVON on 09-03-16
By: Dan Vyleta
-
The Silent Treatment
- A Novel
- By: Abbie Greaves
- Narrated by: Alison Downing, Adrian Rawlins, Olivia Darnley
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By all appearances, Frank and Maggie share a happy, loving marriage. But for the past six months, they have not spoken. Not a sentence, not a single word. Maggie isn’t sure what, exactly, provoked Frank’s silence, though she has a few ideas. Day after day, they have eaten meals together and slept in the same bed in an increasingly uncomfortable silence that has become, for Maggie, deafening.
-
-
A tender page turner
- By M. Diamonti on 04-17-20
By: Abbie Greaves
-
A Hue of Blu
- By: Marie-France Leger
- Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly, Nick Mondelli
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bold, charismatic, and charming Blu Henderson wears a fake smile every day, pushing through life because she has to—not because she wants to. Quiet, introverted, and mysterious Jace Boland catches her eye the second she sees him. After that, it’s game over—not just for Blu, but for Jace as well.
-
-
reflection of my life
- By Shelby on 05-16-25
-
The Forgotten Cottage
- By: Courtney Ellis
- Narrated by: Lorna Bennett, Helen Laser
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
England, 2014: Audrey Collins knows only two things about her beloved grandmother's past: She was born into nobility and she immigrated to America at seventeen years old. So when Audrey inherits her gran's home in North Yorkshire, she arrives expecting a sprawling country estate fit for lords and ladies. Instead, she finds an abandoned stone cottage perfectly preserved as Gran left it when she fled in 1941—ration book and all—and begins to uncover what secrets her family has been keeping.
-
-
Great book.
- By Kathy H. on 05-15-23
By: Courtney Ellis
-
The Night Watch
- By: Sarah Waters
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 18 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past - whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunning surprise, and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event.
-
-
A Captivating Tale of Resilience and War
- By Anonymous User on 12-27-23
By: Sarah Waters
-
The School of Mirrors
- A Novel
- By: Eva Stachniak
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. When the time is right, each girl is smuggled into the palace of Versailles, with its legendary Hall of Mirrors.
-
-
Fascinating but pedophilia nonetheless.
- By Barbara W. on 05-10-22
By: Eva Stachniak
-
A Play for the End of the World
- A Novel
- By: Jai Chakrabarti
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Traveling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis.
-
-
I can’t believe this is a debut novel
- By Jennifer Lang on 09-28-21
By: Jai Chakrabarti
-
All Together Now
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Norman
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At just 35, reclusive billionaire Robbie Malcolm is a renowned financial prognosticator, a celebrated philanthropist, and a mathematical genius. Also, he’s dying, which is a fact he’s carefully concealing from the world. As he takes stock, Robbie realizes that his wealth means nothing if he can’t help the people who matter most. So he invites his oldest friends - Blair, Cat, and Wade - to their beloved Fenwick Island on the coast of Delaware to share his secret and to reveal plans for each of them that he believes will change their lives forever.
-
-
Loved the beginning, middle but especially the end.
- By Simon on 07-07-21
By: Matthew Norman
-
Annelies
- A Novel
- By: David R. Gillham
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, David R. Gillham
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anne Frank is a cultural icon whose diary painted a vivid picture of the Holocaust and made her an image of humanity in one of history’s darkest moments. But she was also a person - a precocious young girl with a rich inner life and tremendous skill as a writer. In this masterful new novel, David R. Gillham explores with breathtaking empathy the woman - and the writer - she might have become.
-
-
Wow!
- By Amazon Customer on 02-29-20
By: David R. Gillham
-
Small Pleasures
- A Novel
- By: Clare Chambers
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.
-
-
Awful ending
- By greyhound on 03-07-22
By: Clare Chambers
-
The Call of the Sea
- By: Sian Ann Bessey
- Narrated by: Robert Lewis Owen
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of her betrothal to a nobleman she’s never met, Rhiannon seeks comfort on the shores of the sea she loves so well. But instead of offering peace to her uneasy heart, the ocean heralds doom with the arrival of dreaded Viking ships. A vicious raid leads to the death of her beloved father and leaves Rhiannon’s life in tatters. Heartbroken, she travels to Ynys Môn, where she takes up residence at the royal court of Owain Gwynedd.
-
-
Great story
- By Tracie on 05-08-25
By: Sian Ann Bessey
-
Affliction
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.
-
-
The Enigma of Human Life
- By Carlo Pate on 12-07-20
By: Russell Banks
-
The Butterfly Lampshade
- A Novel
- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight-year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.
-
-
Quite a Journey!
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-20
By: Aimee Bender
One man touching the life of many women
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.