
The Usual Desire to Kill
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Harriet Walter
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By:
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Camilla Barnes
About this listen
An often hilarious, surprisingly moving portrait of a long-married couple, seen through the eyes of their wickedly observant daughter—for fans of A Man Called Ove and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983.
Miranda’s father is a retired professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Miranda’s mother likes to bring conversation back to “the War,” although she was born after it ended. Married for fifty years, they are uncommonly set in their ways. Miranda plays the role of translator when she visits, communicating the desires or complaints of one parent to the other and then venting her frustration to her sister and her daughter. At the end of a visit, she reports “the usual desire to kill.”
This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.
©2025 Camilla Barnes (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives. James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries.
By: Seán Hewitt
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The Beautiful Bureaucrat
- A Novel
- By: Helen Phillips
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings - the office's scarred, pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echo eerily down the long halls.
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Helen Philips is Kafka strolling through Night Vale
- By vurnt22 on 04-29-16
By: Helen Phillips
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The Burning Heart of the World
- By: Nancy Kricorian
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In vivid, poetic prose, Nancy Kricorian’s The Burning Heart of the World tells the story of a Beirut Armenian family before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War. Returning to the fabular tone of Zabelle, her popular first novel, Kricorian conjures up the lost worlds and intergenerational traumas that haunt a family in permanent exile. Leavened with humor and imbued with the timelessness of a folktale, The Burning Heart of the World is a sweeping saga that takes listeners on an epic journey from the mountains of Cilicia to contemporary New York City.
By: Nancy Kricorian
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Company
- By: Max Barry
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Nestled among Seattle's skyscrapers, The Zephyr Holdings Building is a bleak rectangle topped by an orange-and-black logo that gives no hint of Zephyr's business. Lack of clarity, it turns out, is Zephyr's defining characteristic. The floors are numbered in reverse. No one has ever seen the CEO or glimpsed his office on the first (i.e., top) floor. Yet every day people clip on their ID tags, file into the building, sit at their desks, and hope that they're not about to be outsourced.
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A Wonderful Experience
- By Jacob on 02-08-06
By: Max Barry
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The Float Test
- A Novel
- By: Lynn Steger Strong
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
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The Impossible Thing
- By: Belinda Bauer
- Narrated by: Phil Dunster
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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1926. On the cliffs of Yorkshire, men are lowered on ropes to steal the eggs of the sea birds who nest there. The most beautiful are sold for large sums. A small girl—penniless and neglected by her family—retrieves one such treasure. Its discovery will forever alter the course of her life. A century later. In a remote cottage in Wales, Patrick Fort finds his friend, Nick, and his mother tied up and robbed. The only thing missing: a carved case containing an incredible scarlet egg.
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𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱
- By Lea50 on 04-09-25
By: Belinda Bauer
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Freakslaw
- By: Jane Flett
- Narrated by: Abigail Lawrie
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the summer of ‘97 and the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change. Enter the Freakslaw―a travelling carnival of deviant queers and architects of mayhem. There’s Gloria, fortune teller and worm charmer; her daughter Nancy, a contortionist witch; big-hearted tightrope walker, Werewolf Louie; not to mention illusionists and conjoined twins, Cass and Henry, and tattooed human pincushion, Pin Gal.
By: Jane Flett
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Murder by Cheesecake
- A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery
- By: Rachel Ekstrom Courage
- Narrated by: Yvonne Newman
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf-themed wedding Rose is hosting.
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Loved it!
- By Gab on 04-17-25
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I See You've Called in Dead
- A Novel
- By: John Kenney
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.
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wonderful book. Comic edge but full of heart
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-25
By: John Kenney
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Somadina
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Nene Nwoko, Akwaeke Emezi
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Somadina and her twin brother, Jayaike, are practically the same person: they finish each other's sentences and make each other whole. When the twins come of age, their magical gifts begin to develop, but while Jayaike's powers enchant, Somadina's cause fear to ripple through her town. Always an outsider, Somadina now faces blatant—and dangerous—hostility. And things go from bad to worse when her brother—the one person she trusted—vanishes. Somadina knows that no matter the dangers, she must track him down.
By: Akwaeke Emezi
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Heartwood
- By: Amity Gaige
- Narrated by: Justine Lupe, Alma Cuervo, Rebecca Lowman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground.
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Very good with details for folks who love hiking
- By Amazon Customer on 04-04-25
By: Amity Gaige
What listeners say about The Usual Desire to Kill
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- M. Faulkner
- 04-17-25
Brilliant
Crackling dry wit and yet beautifully heartfelt. I loved these flawed, funny people. Lovely reading as well.
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- Eileen Clark-Nagaoka
- 04-23-25
Excellent, subtle humor and heartbreaking family dynamics.
Camilla Barnes created such a beautifully layered, comic and heartbreaking family portrait in this novel.
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