Welcome Home, Stranger
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Xe Sands
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By:
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Kate Christensen
About this listen
“Kate Christensen’s new novel, Welcome Home, Stranger, is a revelation, offering characters as real as your family and friends, a rich, vividly drawn setting, grab-you-by-the-throat drama and always, lurking in the shadows, a fierce authorial intelligence. What more could you ask?”—Richard Russo, author of Somebody’s Fool
“To the great literature of going home again we can now add Kate Christensen’s superb new novel Welcome Home, Stranger, a triumph of intelligence and wit (which will surprise none of her many fans). The prodigal here is a brilliant journalist grieving the loss of a very difficult mother while attempting peace with those she left behind: a resentful sister and an ex-lover who can be neither trusted nor forgotten. A spellbinding book from one of our best chroniclers of the very American struggle to strive for excellence while still living in community with others.”—Ann Packer, author of The Children’s Crusade
“A deeply endearing story about confronting one’s past and constructing a new future—under extreme duress. . . . Welcome Home, Stranger . . . arrives at the most lovely ending of a novel I’ve read all year."—Washington Post
From the PEN-Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man comes a novel about grief, love, growing older, and the complications of family that is the story of a fifty-something woman who goes home—reluctantly—to Maine after the death of her mother.
Can you ever truly go home again?
An environmental journalist in Washington, DC, Rachel has shunned her New England working-class family for years. Divorced and childless in her middle age, she’s a true independent spirit with the pain and experience to prove it. Coping with challenges large and small, she thinks her life is in free fall–until she’s summoned home to deal with the aftermath of her mother’s death.
Then things really fall apart.
Surrounded by a cast of sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreakingly serious characters—an arriviste sister, an alcoholic brother-in-law and, most importantly, the love of her life recently married to the sister’s best friend–Rachel must come to terms with her past, the sorrow she has long buried, and the ghost of the mother who, for better and worse, made her the woman she is.
Lively, witty, and painfully familiar, this sophisticated and emotionally resonant novel from the author of The Great Man holds a mirror up to modern life as it considers the way some of us must carry on now.
©2023 Kate Christensen (P)2023 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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I ain’t afraid of no ghosts
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 10-31-24
By: Mary Kay Andrews
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A Christmas Carol
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Hugh Grant
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1843, it tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean and unpleasant man who dislikes people generally and Christmas especially. One Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come and given a glimpse of the many homes and lives which Scrooge has touched in his wretched life to date. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
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Christmas Classic Given New Life
- By E-Hank3 on 12-26-20
By: Charles Dickens
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A Christmas Carol: A Signature Performance by Tim Curry
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Tim Curry
- Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A Signature Performance: Tim Curry rescues Charles Dickens from the jaws of Disney with his one-of-a-kind performance of the treasured classic. Our listeners loved this version so much that it inspired our whole line of Signature Classics.
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Wonderful!!!
- By Alia on 12-11-09
By: Charles Dickens
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George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
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It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
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A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
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The Plight Before Christmas
- By: Kate Stewart
- Narrated by: Joe Arden, Maxine Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Clark Griswold was onto something...at least with his annual holiday meltdown. And since the last three weeks of my life have been riddled with humbug—another breakup, a broken toe, an office promotion I deserved and didn’t get—I’m not at all in the mood to celebrate nor have the happ, happ, happiest Christmas EVER.
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Gaslighting and games
- By FMC on 12-22-22
By: Kate Stewart
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He's Gone
- By: Rebecca Collomosse
- Narrated by: Victoria Blunt, Cicely Whitehead, Joe Eyre
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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My fiancé brought me tea and scrambled eggs in bed that morning, and we snuggled together, talking about buying our rings, and about our perfect wedding next year. Then we headed into town. He held my hand and gazed at the ring I liked best, a smile spreading slowly over his face. Then a glass of bubbly to celebrate. I felt flushed, excited and ready for the rest of my life with the man I loved. We race to get on the train home. It screams to a halt and I run towards its open doors. Made it. I think he’s right behind me — but when I turn around, he’s gone.
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Disappointing plot
- By TerriSweeta on 12-04-24
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The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
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Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
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Starship Troopers
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.
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The definitive version!
- By Kristopher G. Hesson on 10-03-24
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Dead Med
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Patricia Santomasso, Scott Merriman
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When Heather McKinley dreamed of becoming a doctor, she imagined curing sick kids and sporting pink stethoscopes. She never anticipated the sleepless nights, grueling exams, and endless labs. And she certainly never knew that her medical school earned the nickname Dead Med thanks to the tragic history of students overdosing on illegal drugs. But Heather would never consider doing anything like that. That is, until her longtime boyfriend dumps her, she finds herself failing anatomy, and her world starts to crumble.
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Hmm
- By Morgan Meaux on 08-22-24
By: Freida McFadden
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Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many—all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it.
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Nothing is What it Seems
- By Matt on 11-07-23
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The Other Mothers
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Psychological suspense at its best
- By Cassandra on 12-11-23
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Is This Tomorrow
- By: Caroline Leavitt
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
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It’s 1956, and working-mother Ava Lark and her son, Lewis, have rented a house in a less-than-welcoming Boston suburb. There, Lewis finds he is only able to befriend the other fatherless kids on the block, Jimmy and Rose. But when Jimmy goes missing, neighborhood paranoia ramps to new heights, further ostracizing Ava and Lewis.
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Teenage sisters Eve and Vera never imagined their summer vacation would be spent in the Arctic, tagging along on their mother’s scientific expedition. But there’s a lot about their lives lately that hasn’t been going as planned, and truth be told, their single mother might not be so happy either. Now in Siberia with a bunch of serious biologists, Eve and Vera are just bored enough to cause trouble. Fooling around in the permafrost, they accidentally discover a perfectly preserved, four-thousand-year-old baby mammoth, and things finally start to get interesting.
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Shocked my husband
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On the cusp of forty, Justine Bailen, better known as Jo, works for an all-female detective agency based in Tucson, Arizona. While staking out a cheating spouse, she learns that her long-estranged best friend from childhood, Rose, is missing, and that Rose’s mother wants to hire Jo to find her. This case is all kinds of wrong for Jo, but she has no choice but to head back to her hometown, an hour north and a world away from Tucson.
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When a young nanny is found dead in mysterious circumstances, new mom, Tash, is intrigued. She has been searching for a story to launch her career as a freelance journalist. But she has also been searching for something else—new friends to help her navigate motherhood. She sees them at her son’s new playgroup. The other mothers. A group of sleek, sophisticated women who live in a neighborhood of tree-lined avenues and stunning houses. The sort of mothers Tash herself would like to be. When the mothers welcome her into their circle, Tash discovers the kind of life she has always dreamt of.
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Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him—he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it’s a rumor that just won’t die.
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F word use
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A Council of Dolls
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From the mid-century metropolis of Chicago to the windswept ancestral lands of the Dakota people, to the bleak and brutal Indian boarding schools, A Council of Dolls is the story of three women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried….
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Valuable Perspective, told with gentleness
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Bluebird, Bluebird
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When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules - a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the Lone Star State, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders - a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman - have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment.
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Good but very irritating
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I Hope This Finds You Well
- A Novel
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- Narrated by: Nasim Pedrad
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- Unabridged
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Story
As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.
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I Hope You Listen to This Book
- By Amazon Customer on 11-24-24
By: Natalie Sue
What listeners say about Welcome Home, Stranger
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Performance
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- Pammy B
- 03-13-24
I didn't get it
Is it strange that i chose some books by who narrates it? I love Xe Sands, and her voice is the best thing about this book. I felt the story was rambling and pointless. Maybe it was just too deep for me.
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- Stephanee Squires
- 01-05-24
Bland
There just wasn’t much to the story. I expected something more at the end, but I did finish it.
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- Fran R
- 12-14-23
It ended too soon!
What a wonderful, rich, textured story about grown sisters overcoming a deeply flawed mother. Xe Sands gives her usual stellar narration. Highly recommend!
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- BuyerOfThings
- 12-22-23
Great narrator
Finally an adult female narrator that doesn’t sound like a child! A chirpy adult child that’s loathsome to hear read a serious novel. The story is about careers, relationships, looking back over life choices good & bad & looking forward when the future isn’t what you expected.
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- Keri Seitz
- 06-14-24
Great descriptions
As a Mainer, loved the accurate depiction of places familiar to me. Only Damariscotta was pronounced incorrectly. :) Narrator was a bit too much at times. Story was melancholy and heart wrenching, ending was suitable to the story. Not everyone will like this story. I did.
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- CoastalReader
- 08-16-24
Great story and characters. Not so great a reader.
The story was great. Interesting characters. The reader’s voice was grating— almost as if she didn’t have the energy to croak the words out. I wish I had read it rather than listened to it.
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- bonziric
- 03-03-24
great narrator
I kept waiting for it to get better. it's an okay read. I finished it but I wish better things would have happened for the main character.
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- Michele
- 01-06-24
Well written but depressing
This book was well written, but the characters, with the exception of the protagonist, were not well-drawn enough for me, and the overall feeling was depressing. The little bit of hope at the end was not worth it. I found the narrator’s style distracting and difficult to understand at times.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Judy in Salt Lake
- 12-17-23
Simply told, but heartrending and profound
If you’ve had mental illness in your family, especially a mother, as I have had, this book will make you think of things you haven’t thought of in a long time in a different light.  This is a story of two sisters, bound together by a brutal childhood, who somehow survived, and thrived in their own way. They are both able to look back on things at an older age from a different perspective.
Excellently drawn characters, engaging plot, gave me a lot to think about. I’ve recommended this book to other friends and I might read it again myself. Beautifully performed.

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- E.K. Lanier
- 01-21-24
Terrific
Beautiful language. Evolution of a life in a few weeks from one of urban striving solitude to a new future of flawed family and change for the better?
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