
The Wildes
A Novel in Five Acts
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 $25.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Elisabeth Rodgers
-
Damian Lynch
-
P.J. Ochlan
-
Louis Bayard
-
By:
-
Louis Bayard
About this listen
From the bestselling author of The Pale Blue Eye comes a brilliantly profound and empathetic story about Oscar Wilde's wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright's imprisonment for homosexuality, told against the backdrop of Victorian England and World War I.
In September of 1892, Oscar Wilde and his family retreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every reason to be happy: two beautiful sons, a stellar reputation as an advocate for progressive causes, and a delightfully charming and affectionate husband and father, who is perhaps the most famous man in England. But as an assortment of houseguests arrive, including an aristocratic young wannabe poet named Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance gradually—and then all at once—comes to see that her husband's heart is elsewhere and that the growing intensity between the two men threatens the whole foundation of their lives.
The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts revolves around that fateful summer: what happened, and what might have been. When it was exposed, Oscar's affair with Lord Alfred Douglas—Bosie, as he was known—led to Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality, and the financial and emotional ruin of his family. In Act Two, Bayard reveals Constance and their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, in exile, forced to sell their possessions, leave England, and hide their identities. Act Three, from the perspective of Cyril, brings listeners into the French trenches of World War I, where Cyril must grapple with the kind of man he wants to become, while Act Four reveals Vyvyan in London, years after the war, searching for answers from those who knew his parents. And in a brilliant act of the imagination, Act Five brings the entire cast back together in a surprising, poignant, and tremendously satisfying tableau.
With Louis Bayard's trademark sparkling dialogue, paired with his deep insight into the lives and longings of all his characters—and based on real events—The Wildes could almost have been created by Oscar Wilde himself: lightly told but with hidden depths, it is an entertaining and dramatic story about the human condition.
©2024 Louis Bayard (P)2024 Algonquin BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Precipice
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.
-
-
outstanding in every way
- By Rosalind Britton on 10-10-24
By: Robert Harris
-
The Children of Jocasta
- A Novel
- By: Natalie Haynes
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband. Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change. With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as we’ve known it.
-
-
I preferred Sophocles' versions of the Oedipus and Antigone myths.
- By Gail N. on 11-14-24
By: Natalie Haynes
-
Frankie
- A Novel
- By: Graham Norton
- Narrated by: Graham Norton
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Always on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie Howe was never quite sure enough of herself to take center stage—after all, life had already judged her harshly. Now old, Frankie finds it easier to forget the life that came before. Then Damian, a young Irish caretaker, arrives at her London flat, there to keep an eye on her as she recovers from a fall. A memory is sparked, and the past crackles into life as Damian listens to the story Frankie has kept stored away all these years.
-
-
The accents were amazing.
- By Karen Santos on 02-26-25
By: Graham Norton
-
The Stolen Child
- A Novel
- By: Ann Hood
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he’d befriended thrust both her paintings and her baby into his hands—and disappeared. In 1974, with only months left to live, Nick enlists Jenny, a college dropout desperate for adventure, to help him unravel the mystery. The journey leads them from Paris galleries and provincial towns to a surprising place: the Museum of Tears, the life’s work of a lonely Italian craftsman.
-
-
What if you made a different decision at some point in your life
- By maryanne k on 05-17-24
By: Ann Hood
-
The Most
- By: Jessica Anthony
- Narrated by: Abigail Reno
- Length: 3 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is an unseasonably warm Sunday in November 1957. Katheen, a college tennis champion turned Delaware housewife, decides not to join her flagrantly handsome life insurance salesman husband, Virgil, or their two young boys, at church. Instead, she takes a dip in the kidney-shaped swimming pool of their apartment complex. And then she won’t come out.
-
-
Two people who are cheaters in
- By Eun on 08-11-24
By: Jessica Anthony
-
The Final Game
- By: Caimh McDonnell
- Narrated by: Morgan C Jones
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothy Graham is dead, which is inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of the truly dreadful people she is related to want to get their hands on her money, they’re going to have to do so via a fiendish difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy’s devising. After all, just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable.
-
-
Fun and likable, but not stranger times.
- By Dr. S. Ziesmann on 10-26-23
By: Caimh McDonnell
-
Precipice
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.
-
-
outstanding in every way
- By Rosalind Britton on 10-10-24
By: Robert Harris
-
The Children of Jocasta
- A Novel
- By: Natalie Haynes
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband. Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change. With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as we’ve known it.
-
-
I preferred Sophocles' versions of the Oedipus and Antigone myths.
- By Gail N. on 11-14-24
By: Natalie Haynes
-
Frankie
- A Novel
- By: Graham Norton
- Narrated by: Graham Norton
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Always on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie Howe was never quite sure enough of herself to take center stage—after all, life had already judged her harshly. Now old, Frankie finds it easier to forget the life that came before. Then Damian, a young Irish caretaker, arrives at her London flat, there to keep an eye on her as she recovers from a fall. A memory is sparked, and the past crackles into life as Damian listens to the story Frankie has kept stored away all these years.
-
-
The accents were amazing.
- By Karen Santos on 02-26-25
By: Graham Norton
-
The Stolen Child
- A Novel
- By: Ann Hood
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he’d befriended thrust both her paintings and her baby into his hands—and disappeared. In 1974, with only months left to live, Nick enlists Jenny, a college dropout desperate for adventure, to help him unravel the mystery. The journey leads them from Paris galleries and provincial towns to a surprising place: the Museum of Tears, the life’s work of a lonely Italian craftsman.
-
-
What if you made a different decision at some point in your life
- By maryanne k on 05-17-24
By: Ann Hood
-
The Most
- By: Jessica Anthony
- Narrated by: Abigail Reno
- Length: 3 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is an unseasonably warm Sunday in November 1957. Katheen, a college tennis champion turned Delaware housewife, decides not to join her flagrantly handsome life insurance salesman husband, Virgil, or their two young boys, at church. Instead, she takes a dip in the kidney-shaped swimming pool of their apartment complex. And then she won’t come out.
-
-
Two people who are cheaters in
- By Eun on 08-11-24
By: Jessica Anthony
-
The Final Game
- By: Caimh McDonnell
- Narrated by: Morgan C Jones
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothy Graham is dead, which is inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of the truly dreadful people she is related to want to get their hands on her money, they’re going to have to do so via a fiendish difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy’s devising. After all, just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable.
-
-
Fun and likable, but not stranger times.
- By Dr. S. Ziesmann on 10-26-23
By: Caimh McDonnell
-
The Magnificent Ruins
- By: Nayantara Roy
- Narrated by: Deepa Samuel
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lila De is on the verge of a career breakthrough when she gets a call from her mother in Kolkata, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate–so she returns home after a decade with no contact. Her extended family isn’t so easy to win over, and to make matters worse, Lila is caught between her old boyfriend and her occasional lover–her star author–who suddenly wants to define the relationship. As Lila come to terms with both past and present, suppressed family secrets emerge, culminating in a shocking act of violence. Lila has no choice but to finally address her family.
-
-
great story
- By Lori Kaplan on 01-26-25
By: Nayantara Roy
-
The Girls We Sent Away
- By: Meagan Church
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s the 1960s in North Carolina, and Lorraine Delford has it all—an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. It’s ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.
-
-
Very predictable
- By Old dog learning new trick on 05-13-24
By: Meagan Church
-
Remember Me Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Farah Heron
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
East House is the oldest and least desirable dorm on campus, but it has a draw for lonely university freshman Aleeza Kassam: Jay Hoque, the hot and broody student who vanished from East House five months ago without a trace. It’s irresistible to an aspiring investigative journalist like Aleeza. But when she starts receiving texts from Jay, the mystery takes an unexpected turn. To put it mildly.
-
-
Great story, diminished by author's style
- By Denise Thibodeaux on 12-31-24
By: Farah Heron
-
Washington's End
- The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle
- By: Jonathan Horn
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Washington’s End begins where most biographies of George Washington leave off, with the first president exiting office after eight years and entering what would become the most bewildering stage of his life. Embittered by partisan criticism and eager to return to his farm, Washington assumed a role for which there was no precedent at a time when the kings across the ocean yielded their crowns only upon losing their heads. In a different sense, Washington would lose his head, too.
-
-
INTRIGUING SNAPSHOT
- By JPALJ on 02-23-20
By: Jonathan Horn
-
Ordinary Human Failings
- A Novel
- By: Megan Nolan
- Narrated by: Jessica Regan
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the "peasants"—ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star seems set to rise when he stumbles across a sensational scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents beloved across the neighborhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and “bad apples”: the Greens. At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances.
-
-
Grim and luminous all at once.
- By M. Locher on 02-08-25
By: Megan Nolan
-
The Resistance Bakery
- By: Siobhan Curham
- Narrated by: Lauryn Allman
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, 1943. The scent of fresh baguettes hangs in the air as Coralie unbolts the door to her bakery with trembling fingers. She must get out of the city. Hiding her precious leather recipe book inside her coat, she promises never to let the secret locations of the people she worked tirelessly to save fall into German hands… Present day. Raven is unhappy about being shipped off to the other side of the country for the summer to stay with the mysterious French grandmother she barely knows.
-
-
One of the best!!!
- By NICK J. on 02-08-25
By: Siobhan Curham
-
Mothers and Sons
- A Novel
- By: Adam Haslett
- Narrated by: Andrew Gibson, Janet Metzger
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built.
-
-
Good multiple narrators. Tiresome characters.
- By CoastalReader on 02-20-25
By: Adam Haslett
-
The Road to the Salt Sea
- A Novel
- By: Samuel Kolawole
- Narrated by: Atta Otigba
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.
-
-
A Fast-Paced, Heart-Shredding, Unflinching Migrant Story
- By Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond on 07-25-24
By: Samuel Kolawole
-
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie
- A Novel
- By: Marie Benedict
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car - strange for a frigid night. Her World War I veteran husband and her daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away.
-
-
I don’t think they had iPads in 1926
- By Sydney Castro on 12-29-20
By: Marie Benedict
-
Huron Breeze(Sunrise-Side Mystery Book 1)
- By: Landon Beach
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Suzanne Elise Freeman
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ten years ago, legendary author Riley Cannon produced three of the best-selling thriller novels of all-time. Then, she vanished, leaving the final three books of the saga unfinished and producing the biggest mystery in the history of publishing. Now, a decade later, there is word from her mega-agent, the glamorous and powerful Topaz Kennedy, that a new Cannon novel is all-but-finished. But, Topaz knows the truth: Riley Cannon hasn’t even started the book. With the clock counting down to the publication date, desperate measures are needed.
-
-
I've not heard of this Author, but you will!
- By Bill on 06-20-22
By: Landon Beach
-
Hate Follow
- A Novel
- By: Erin Quinn-Kong
- Narrated by: Carolyn Jania
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Influencer Whitney Golden has it all: beautiful, photogenic children; a handsome new boyfriend; a gorgeous house; and designer clothes and beauty products that arrive on her doorstep every day. After spending years building her brand as a widowed mother of four (including twins!) to over a million followers, the thirty-seven-year-old is at the peak of her career. But it all comes to a screeching halt when Mia, her teenaged daughter, announces she’s tired of the social media life.
-
-
Interesting perspective on social media and lovely homage to Austin, TX
- By ekim on 10-31-24
By: Erin Quinn-Kong
-
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
- Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.
- By: Nicholas Meyer
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This "rediscovered" Sherlock Holmes adventure recounts the unique collaboration of Holmes and Sigmund Freud in the solution of a mystery on which the lives of millions may depend.
-
-
Did I Get the Same Book Everyone Else Got?
- By Troy on 08-28-13
By: Nicholas Meyer
Critic reviews
"It requires a novelist of great audacity to dare to attempt to bring Oscar Wilde back to life, and it requires a novelist of great skill, to say nothing of wit, to manage the feat persuasively. Happily, Louis Bayard is both of those novelists. As if that were not enough, The Wildes also presents us with a portrait of Oscar's wife, Constance, that is little short of breathtaking in its vibrant depth, and a recounting of the heartbreaking tragedy of the Wildes that is eloquent and fully compassionate to all its characters, certainly to the Wildes' sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, and even to (almost astonishingly) that feckless instrument of destruction Lord Alfred Douglas. I read The Wildes in an improbable state of breathless suspense, so wonderfully well has Bayard presented us with real people pressing, often excruciatingly, toward fateful decisions. This is an intoxicatingly gorgeous novel."—Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English
Editorial Review
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Pale Blue Eye
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Charles Leggett
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the body of a suicide victim disappears at West Point Military Academy in 1831, only to be discovered hours later missing its heart, the Academy calls on retired detective Gus Landor to investigate. Landor is something of a legend among his peers, noted for an uncanny, Holmesian ability to read people. When Edgar Allan Poe, a new cadet, comes forth with his own cryptic conclusion—that the man Landor is looking for is a poet—Landor is intrigued and enlists Poe as his assistant.
-
-
Could not get through it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-15
By: Louis Bayard
-
The Children of Jocasta
- A Novel
- By: Natalie Haynes
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband. Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change. With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as we’ve known it.
-
-
I preferred Sophocles' versions of the Oedipus and Antigone myths.
- By Gail N. on 11-14-24
By: Natalie Haynes
-
Jackie & Me
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Sean Rohani
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is “not to be a housewife,” but when she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a Georgetown party, her resolution begins to falter. Soon the two are flirting over secret phone calls, cocktails, and dinner dates, and as Jackie is drawn deeper into the Kennedy orbit, and as Jack himself grows increasingly elusive and absent, she begins to question what life at his side would mean.
-
-
Narration Terrible
- By Peggy T on 06-15-22
By: Louis Bayard
-
Atomic Anna
- By: Rachel Barenbaum
- Narrated by: Traci Odom, Natalie Naudus, Emily Lawrence, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1986, renowned nuclear scientist Anna Berkova is sleeping in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl’s reactor melts down. It’s the exact moment she tears through time—and it’s an accident. When she opens her eyes, she’s landed in 1992 only to discover Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Molly, with her dying breath, begs Anna to go back in time and stop the disaster, to save Molly’s daughter Raisa, and put their family’s future on a better path.
-
-
I wanted to love this book
- By N McCoy on 10-26-22
By: Rachel Barenbaum
-
Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed
- By: José Pablo Iriarte
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Benny Ramírez can see dead people.... Well, one dead person, anyway. A hilarious and heartwarming story about a boy who can suddenly see the ghost of his famous musician grandfather!
-
-
Amazingly written
- By Snow on 05-11-25
-
The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Hogan
- Narrated by: Nina Wadia
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After inheriting her mother’s fortune-telling business as a young woman, Imelda Burova has spent her life on the Brighton pier practicing her trade. She and her trusty pack of Tarot cards have seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Now, after a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, Madam Burova is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do—to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them.
-
-
Trigger warning
- By Kristyn Rose on 01-30-23
By: Ruth Hogan
-
The Pale Blue Eye
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Charles Leggett
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the body of a suicide victim disappears at West Point Military Academy in 1831, only to be discovered hours later missing its heart, the Academy calls on retired detective Gus Landor to investigate. Landor is something of a legend among his peers, noted for an uncanny, Holmesian ability to read people. When Edgar Allan Poe, a new cadet, comes forth with his own cryptic conclusion—that the man Landor is looking for is a poet—Landor is intrigued and enlists Poe as his assistant.
-
-
Could not get through it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-15
By: Louis Bayard
-
The Children of Jocasta
- A Novel
- By: Natalie Haynes
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband. Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change. With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as we’ve known it.
-
-
I preferred Sophocles' versions of the Oedipus and Antigone myths.
- By Gail N. on 11-14-24
By: Natalie Haynes
-
Jackie & Me
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Sean Rohani
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is “not to be a housewife,” but when she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a Georgetown party, her resolution begins to falter. Soon the two are flirting over secret phone calls, cocktails, and dinner dates, and as Jackie is drawn deeper into the Kennedy orbit, and as Jack himself grows increasingly elusive and absent, she begins to question what life at his side would mean.
-
-
Narration Terrible
- By Peggy T on 06-15-22
By: Louis Bayard
-
Atomic Anna
- By: Rachel Barenbaum
- Narrated by: Traci Odom, Natalie Naudus, Emily Lawrence, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1986, renowned nuclear scientist Anna Berkova is sleeping in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl’s reactor melts down. It’s the exact moment she tears through time—and it’s an accident. When she opens her eyes, she’s landed in 1992 only to discover Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Molly, with her dying breath, begs Anna to go back in time and stop the disaster, to save Molly’s daughter Raisa, and put their family’s future on a better path.
-
-
I wanted to love this book
- By N McCoy on 10-26-22
By: Rachel Barenbaum
-
Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed
- By: José Pablo Iriarte
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Benny Ramírez can see dead people.... Well, one dead person, anyway. A hilarious and heartwarming story about a boy who can suddenly see the ghost of his famous musician grandfather!
-
-
Amazingly written
- By Snow on 05-11-25
-
The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Hogan
- Narrated by: Nina Wadia
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After inheriting her mother’s fortune-telling business as a young woman, Imelda Burova has spent her life on the Brighton pier practicing her trade. She and her trusty pack of Tarot cards have seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Now, after a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, Madam Burova is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do—to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them.
-
-
Trigger warning
- By Kristyn Rose on 01-30-23
By: Ruth Hogan
-
Courting Mr. Lincoln
- A Novel
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Robert Fass, Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Mary Todd meets Abraham Lincoln in Springfield in the winter of 1840, he is on no one's shortlist to be president. Rough and reticent, he's a country lawyer lacking money and manners, living above a dry goods shop, but with a gift for oratory. Mary, a quick, self-possessed debutante with a tireless interest in debates and elections, at first finds him an enigma. "I can only hope," she tells his roommate, the handsome, charming Joshua Speed, "that his waters being so very still, they also run deep."
-
-
Very Entertaining
- By Deborah on 05-22-19
By: Louis Bayard
-
Mr. Timothy
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's the Christmas season, and Mr. Timothy Cratchit, not the pious child the world thought he was, has just buried his father. He's also struggling to bury his past as a cripple and shed his financial ties to his benevolent "Uncle" Ebenezer by losing himself in the thick of London's underbelly. He boards at a brothel in exchange for teaching the mistress how to read and spends his nights dredging the Thames for dead bodies and the treasures in their pockets.
-
-
New Favorite!!
- By rhonda kizer on 01-17-23
By: Louis Bayard
-
Covenant Child
- By: Terri Blackstock
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kara and Lizzie are heiresses to one of the largest fortunes in the country. But when their father dies suddenly, the toddlers are taken from the arms of their loving stepmother, Amanda, and given to relatives who only want the children’s fortune for themselves. Kara and Lizzie grow up questioning their worth - until the day they learn the truth. Intensely engaging, emotionally charged, and infused with hope, Covenant Child is an inspiring story that challenges listeners to embrace the life God holds out to us.
-
-
heart break to glory
- By Beth adams on 08-19-22
By: Terri Blackstock
-
The Royal Nanny
- A Novel
- By: Karen Harper
- Narrated by: Melanie Crawley
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
April 1897: A young nanny arrives at Sandringham, ancestral estate of the Duke and Duchess of York. She is excited, exhausted - and about to meet royalty. So begins the unforgettable story of Charlotte Bill, who would care for a generation of royals as their parents never could. Neither Charlotte - LaLa, as her charges dub her - nor anyone else can predict that eldest sons David and Bertie will each one day be king. LaLa knows only that these children, and the four who swiftly follow, need her steadfast loyalty and unconditional affection.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Jasper Van Wyk on 08-05-20
By: Karen Harper
-
Memories of the Lost
- A Novel
- By: Barbara O'Neal
- Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Months after her mother passes away, artist Tillie Morrisey sees a painting in a gallery that leaves her inexplicably lightheaded and unsteady. When a handsome stranger comes to her aid, their connection is so immediate it seems fated, though Liam is only visiting for a few days. Working on her own art has always been a refuge, but after discovering a document among her mother’s belongings that suggests Tillie’s life has been a lie, she begins to suffer from a series of fugue states, with memories surfacing that she isn’t even sure are her own.
-
-
Fun mystery wrapped in a love story
- By sweeterindawn on 10-14-24
By: Barbara O'Neal
-
Roosevelt's Beast
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1914: Brazil's Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt. Plagued by hunger and suffering the lingering effects of malaria, Theodore Roosevelt, his son Kermit, and the other members of the now-ravaged Roosevelt-Rondon scientific expedition are traveling deeper and deeper into the jungle. When Kermit and Teddy are kidnapped by a never-before-seen Amazonian tribe, the great hunters are asked one thing in exchange for their freedom: Find and kill a beast that leaves no tracks and that no member of the tribe has ever seen. But what are the origins of this beast, and how do they escape its brutal wrath?
-
-
Made me dislike the former Pres
- By Dave on 04-03-15
By: Louis Bayard
-
The Black Tower
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Hector Carpentier leads a very quiet life, until he meets legendary police officer Vidocq, who has used his mastery of disguise and surveillance and his extensive knowledge of the Parisian underworld to capture some of the most notorious and elusive criminals.
-
-
Good but not Great
- By Listener on 10-19-09
By: Louis Bayard
-
The Butterfly and the Violin
- A Hidden Masterpiece Novel
- By: Kristy Cambron
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Present day: Manhattan art dealer Sera James watched her world crumble at the altar two years ago, and her heart is still fragile. Her desire for distraction reignites a passion for a mysterious portrait she first saw as a young girl—a painting of a young violinist with piercing blue eyes. In her search for the painting, Sera crosses paths with William Hanover—the grandson of a wealthy California real estate mogul—who may be the key to uncovering the hidden masterpiece.
-
-
great story line but....
- By M. Gail Davis on 05-20-22
By: Kristy Cambron
-
The Governess of Penwythe Hall
- The Cornwall Novels, Book 1
- By: Sarah E. Ladd
- Narrated by: Jude Mason
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cornwall, England, 1811 - Blamed for her husband’s death, Cordelia Greythorne fled Cornwall and accepted a governess position to begin a new life. Years later, her employer’s unexpected death and his last request for her to watch over his five children force her to reevaluate. She can’t abandon the children now that they’ve lost both parents, but their new guardian lives at the timeworn Penwythe Hall...back on the Cornish coast she’s tried desperately to forget.
-
-
A Great ‘Comfort’ Read
- By Doc BonBon on 08-23-19
By: Sarah E. Ladd
-
Under the Tulip Tree
- By: Michelle Shocklee
- Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sixteen-year-old Lorena Leland’s dreams of a rich and fulfilling life as a writer are dashed when the stock market crashes in 1929. Seven years into the Great Depression, Rena’s banker father has retreated into the bottle, her sister is married to a lazy charlatan and gambler, and Rena is an unemployed newspaper reporter. Eager for any writing job, Rena accepts a position interviewing former slaves for the Federal Writers’ Project. There, she meets Frankie Washington, a 101-year-old woman whose honest yet tragic past captivates Rena.
-
-
Wonderful!
- By Becky on 12-03-20
-
Night of a Thousand Darlas
- A Novel
- By: Brooke Abrams
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Liza Day’s mother isn’t dead, but leave it to Darla Day to throw herself a funeral anyway. It’s the kind of attention grab Liza left behind to build a quiet life for herself and her rebellious teenage daughter, Avery. But between her students discovering her old daytime TV show—putting her teaching job at risk—and her mother’s unexpected funeral invitation, Liza’s life feels truly like a soap opera.
-
-
CHAOS, CAMP AND CLOSURE
- By Bradley on 04-22-25
By: Brooke Abrams
-
Oscar
- A Life
- By: Matthew Sturgis
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 36 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oscar Wilde's life – like his wit – was alive with paradox. He was both an early exponent and a victim of 'celebrity culture': famous for being famous, he was lauded and ridiculed in equal measure. His achievements were frequently downplayed, his successes resented. He had a genius for comedy but strove to write tragedies. Matthew Sturgis draws on a wealth of new material and fresh research, bringing alive the distinctive mood and characters of the fin de siècle in the richest and most compelling portrait of Oscar Wilde to date.
By: Matthew Sturgis
Evocative and moving
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wilde biography
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent story! Excellent narrator!
I’m so pleased when I love what I’ve used my credit on.
Wonderful
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
How strong Constance was.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
How a focus on the unheard can give depth to an all too familiar history
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lost in the beautiful writing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
WOW
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very well done audible reading
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Truly an excellent read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.