
The Transit of Venus
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Narrated by:
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Juliet Stevenson
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Shirley Hazzard
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By:
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Shirley Hazzard
About this listen
First time available as an audiobook! Narrated by Juliet Stevenson and featuring archival audio of Shirley Hazzard reading from the book on the stage of the 92NYC.
"One of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century.”–The Paris Review
"Hazzard's prose is magic on the page, somehow at once surgical and symphonic . . . Read it now, so you can read it again soon."—Tad Friend, The New Yorker
The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselves
“An almost perfect novel” (The New York Times), The Transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. From Sydney to London, New York, and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experience seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal.
Caro, gallant and adventurous, has been courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an apparently happy marriage. But as the decades pass and the characters weave in and out of each other's lives, love, death, and two secrets wait in ambush for them.
In exquisite prose, Shirley Hazzard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a tantalizing love story that will transport listeners with “its plushness, patient description, [and] etherizing beauty” (Parul Sagal, The New York Times).
©1980 Shirley Hazzard (P)1980, 2024 Spiegel & Grau by Spotify AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Thirty years have passed since Greta left Marchmont Hall, a grand and beautiful house nestled in the hills of rural Monmouthshire. But when she returns to the Hall for Christmas she has no recollection of her past association with it – the result of a tragic accident that has blanked out more than two decades of her life. Then, during a walk through the wintry landscape, she stumbles across a grave in the woods and the weathered inscription on the headstone tells her that a little boy is buried here.
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Incredible story
- By PegCot on 03-05-23
By: Lucinda Riley
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This Bird Has Flown
- A Novel
- By: Susanna Hoffs
- Narrated by: Susanna Hoffs, Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Jane Start is thirty-three, broke, and recently single. Ten years prior, she had a hit song—written by world-famous superstar Jonesy—but Jane hasn’t had a breakout since. Now she's living out of four garbage bags at her parents’ house, reduced to performing to Karaoke tracks in Las Vegas. Rock bottom. But when her longtime manager Pippa sends Jane to London to regroup, she’s seated next to an intriguing stranger on the flight—the other Tom Hardy, an elegantly handsome Oxford professor of literature. Jane is instantly smitten by Tom, and soon, truly inspired.
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love her but please get another narrator
- By Holly Viola on 04-12-23
By: Susanna Hoffs
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Fry's Ties
- The Life and Times of a Tie Collection
- By: Stephen Fry
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson, Stephen Fry
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this utterly charming volume, Stephen Fry excavates his epic collection of neckties and shares the stories behind them. From the traditional "egg and bacon" colors of the Marylebone Cricket Club to the exuberant Dalmatian pattern of a 1980s Nicole Miller design, each tie tells a story.
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Love it!
- By Saeedeh on 09-01-23
By: Stephen Fry
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On the Marble Cliffs
- By: Ernst Jünger, Jessi Jezewska Stevens - Introduction by, Tess Lewis - Translated by, and others
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in a world of its own, Ernst Jünger's On the Marble Cliffs is both a mesmerizing work of fantasy and an allegory of the advent of fascism. The narrator of the book and his brother, Otho, live in an ancient house carved out of the great marble cliffs that overlook the Marina, a great and beautiful lake that is surrounded by a peaceable land of ancient cities and temples and flourishing vineyards.
By: Ernst Jünger, and others
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Mémoires d'Hadrien
- By: Marguerite Yourcenar
- Narrated by: Stéphane Varupenne
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Cette œuvre est à la fois roman, histoire et poésie. En imaginant les Mémoires d'un grand empereur romain, l'auteur a voulu "refaire du dedans ce que les archéologues du XIXe siècle ont fait du dehors". Jugeant sans complaisance sa vie d'homme et son œuvre politique, Hadrien n'ignore pas que Rome finira un jour par périr, mais son réalisme romain et son humanisme hérité des Grecs lui font sentir l'importance de penser et de servir jusqu'au bout.
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What's not to like!
- By Omar on 10-20-23
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Whale Fall
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth O'Connor
- Narrated by: Dyfrig Morris, Gabrielle Glaister, Gwyneth Keyworth, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.
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Excellent book for audible
- By Lilly on 01-01-25
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The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
- A Novel
- By: Imogen Hermes Gowar
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1780s London, a prosperous merchant finds his quiet life upended when he unexpectedly receives an unusual creature - and meets a most extraordinary woman - in this much-lauded, atmospheric debut that examines our capacity for wonder, obsession, and desire. One September evening in 1785, Jonah Hancock hears an urgent knocking on his front door near the docks of London. The captain of one of Jonah’s trading vessels is waiting eagerly on the front step, bearing shocking news. On a voyage to the Far East, he sold the Jonah’s ship for something rare and far more precious: a mermaid.
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Gave up
- By Isabella Piestrzynska on 10-27-18
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Story of a Murder
- The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen
- By: Hallie Rubenhold
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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On February 1, 1910, the vivacious, diamond-adorned music hall performer Belle Elmore suddenly vanished from her home, causing alarm among her friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. Their demands for an investigation would lead to the unearthing of a gruesome secret and trigger a fevered international manhunt for Belle’s husband, medical fraudster Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen.
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Great but none of the heart of The Five
- By S. Armor on 04-13-25
By: Hallie Rubenhold
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Little, Big
- or, The Fairies' Parliament
- By: John Crowley
- Narrated by: John Crowley
- Length: 24 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Edgewood - which is not found on any map - is many houses, all put inside each other or across each other. It’s filled with and surrounded by mystery and enchantment; the further in you go, the bigger it gets. Smoky Barnable, who has fallen in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, travels from the City on foot to Edgewood, her family home. There he finds himself on the magical border of an otherworld.
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The Farther in You Go, the Bigger it Gets
- By Jefferson on 04-19-12
By: John Crowley
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The Exhibitionist
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Mendelson
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art–the first in many decades–and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: eldest daughter Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; son Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and daughter Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make.
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Where are the strong female characters?
- By Irene Parra on 08-05-23
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Miss Benson's Beetle
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist - the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind.
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A well-written panorama of human tragedy
- By Film Fan on 07-03-21
By: Rachel Joyce