
The Turtle House
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Joy Osmanski
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Kelly Wilkinson
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By:
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Amanda Churchill
About this listen
“A heartbreakingly resonant debut, The Turtle House is a tender, big-hearted story about women, family, and the complicated history of Texas. These characters, and their tentative, flawed stumblings toward grace, will stay with me.”—Elizabeth Wetmore, author of Valentine
“Sweeping yet intimate, Amanda Churchill’s Turtle House spans cultures and continents. Minnie and her granddaughter Lia are unforgettable protagonists, whose grit and grace will inspire you. Together, they find a way through in this gripping debut.”—Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City
Moving between late 1990s small-town Texas to pre-World War II Japan and occupied Tokyo, an emotionally engaging literary debut about a grandmother and granddaughter who connect over a beloved lost place and the secrets they both carry.
It’s spring 1999, and 25-year-old Lia Cope and her prickly 73-year-old grandmother, Mineko, are sharing a bedroom in Curtain, Texas, the ranching town where Lia grew up and Mineko began her life as a Japanese war bride. Both women are at a turning point: Mineko, long widowed, moved in with her son and daughter-in-law after a suspicious fire destroyed the Cope family ranch house, while Lia, an architect with a promising career in Austin, has unexpectedly returned under circumstances she refuses to explain.
Though Lia never felt especially close to her grandmother, the two grow close sharing late-night conversations. Mineko tells stories of her early life in Japan, of the war that changed everything, and of her two great loves: a man named Akio Sato and an abandoned Japanese country estate they called the Turtle House, where their relationship took root. As Mineko reveals more of her early life—tales of innocent swimming lessons that blossom into something more, a friendship nurtured across oceans, totems saved and hidden, the heartbreak of love lost too soon—Lia comes to understand the depth of her grandmother’s pain and sacrifice and sees her Texas family in a new light. She also recognizes that it’s she who needs to come clean—about the budding career she abandoned and the mysterious man who keeps calling.
When Mineko’s adult children decide, against her wishes, to move her into an assisted living community, she and Lia devise a plan to bring a beloved lost place to life, one that they hope will offer the safety and sense of belonging they both need, no matter the cost.
A story of intergenerational friendship, family, coming of age, identity, and love, The Turtle House illuminates the hidden lives we lead, the secrets we hold close, and what it truly means to find home again when it feels lost forever.
©2024 Amanda Churchill (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to 18-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal; her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.
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Heartbreakingly Beautiful
- By Willow Star Serenity on 04-10-20
By: Monica Hesse
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The Keeper of Hidden Books
- A Novel
- By: Madeline Martin
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving. With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club.
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Audiobook of the year for me, truly exceptional!
- By john on 08-02-23
By: Madeline Martin
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Perfectly Ordinary People
- By: Nick Alexander
- Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells, David de Vries, Helen Lloyd, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ruth’s childhood was a happy one, and her family—on her mother’s side—large and loving. But her father’s French origins have always remained a mystery. Now, with aged relatives beginning to die, Ruth decides to research her father’s family before it’s too late. When she discovers a series of long-lost cassettes, everything she thought she knew about them shatters. The tapes expose an unimaginable truth–an epic wartime story of hidden love and sacrifice, stretching back to occupied France.
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Moving story
- By Michelle on 01-30-25
By: Nick Alexander
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Have You Seen Luis Velez?
- By: Catherine Ryan Hyde
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn’t belong. Not with his mother’s new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father’s wife. Not at school, where he’s an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez?
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Disappointed
- By Mark on 01-31-20
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The Light in Hidden Places
- By: Sharon Cameron
- Narrated by: Beata Poźniak
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1943, and for four years, 16-year-old Stefania has been working for the Diamant family in their grocery store in Przemsyl, Poland, singing her way into their lives and hearts. She has even made a promise to one of their sons, Izio - a betrothal they must keep secret since she is Catholic and the Diamants are Jewish.
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Honored...
- By Kami on 03-23-20
By: Sharon Cameron
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The Reading List
- A Novel
- By: Sara Nisha Adams
- Narrated by: Tara Divina, Sagar Arya, Paul Panting
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper. It's a list of novels that she's never heard of before. When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too.
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Fabulous narrators!
- By Barbara S on 10-29-21
By: Sara Nisha Adams
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The Lost Wife
- A Novel
- By: Alyson Richman
- Narrated by: George Guidall, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In pre-war Prague, the dreams of two young lovers are shattered when they are separated by the Nazi invasion. Then, decades later, thousands of miles away in New York, there's an inescapable glance of recognition between two strangers. Providence is giving Lenka and Josef one more chance. From the glamorous ease of life in Prague before the Occupation, to the horrors of Nazi Europe, The Lost Wife explores the power of first love, the resilience of the human spirit, and the strength of memory.
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Love, Strength & Survival
- By Sara on 01-27-14
By: Alyson Richman
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Bitter and Sweet
- A Lowcountry Novel
- By: Rhonda McKnight
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Angel Pean, Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When summoned to Georgetown, South Carolina, sisters Mariah Clark and Sabrina Holland both assume their ailing grandfather's health has gotten worse. Neither expects their grandmother's undeniable request—save the family restaurant. Mariah is at a crossroad in her life. After being dumped by her husband and forced to walk away from their diner that she helped rescue from bankruptcy, bitter feelings consume her. Even though the restaurant has been in the family for eighty-six years, giving her all to another struggling business isn't something she wants to do.
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Great story & narration!
- By MyraRose on 09-07-24
By: Rhonda McKnight
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Red Dog Farm
- A Novel
- By: Nathaniel Ian Miller
- Narrated by: Olafur Darri Olafsson
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things: the cavorting of a newborn calf, the return of birdsong after a long winter, the steadfast love of a good (or tolerably good) farm dog. But the outer world still beckons, so Orri leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík.
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So much animal death.
- By S. Nolte on 03-05-25
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The Light Between Oceans
- A Novel
- By: M. L. Stedman
- Narrated by: Noah Taylor
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby.
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Wonderful story.....terrible narrator.
- By Sandra on 08-14-12
By: M. L. Stedman
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Nightwatching
- A Novel
- By: Tracy Sierra
- Narrated by: Emily Ellet
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. She hears a noise—old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs. Shrouded in the shadows, she sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall.
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Opening was grabbing
- By Stephen R Smith on 03-05-24
By: Tracy Sierra
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The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson
- A Novel
- By: Ellen Baker
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves.
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Interesting story took a while to get into.
- By Kayla B on 03-13-24
By: Ellen Baker
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The Secrets We Kept: Reese's Book Club
- A Novel
- By: Lara Prescott
- Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan, Cynthia Farrell, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dare publish it, and help Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. Glamorous and sophisticated Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit all over the world - using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a complete novice, and is under Sally's tutelage....
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Eh...it was ok.
- By Nunya on 09-06-19
By: Lara Prescott
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The Nine
- The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
- By: Gwen Strauss
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a 10-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.
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Soooo good!
- By anne simpson on 09-28-21
By: Gwen Strauss
A Timeless and Timely Read
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I liked the readers many voices for the characters and you’re able to see the story as it unfolds.
Different and moving
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The author captured stories that epitomize the indomitable human spirit. Delightful!
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At first the halting cadence of the narration bothered me, but then it added to the authenticity of the grandmother’s story
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Disappointing
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I think it would be an excellent book club book because it embodies many important topics to discuss about Japanese Society and the post World War II Japanese American experience
Give it a try!
Absorbing multigenerational story of Japanese Americans
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MUST READ
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The love of a granddaughter
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Grand mini and Leah
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This is the story of Mineko. And it is the story of Lia. Grandmother and granddaughter, never particularly close but full of familial love, find their way, together, as they examine their own lives.
Gorgeous
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