What Storm, What Thunder
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $21.05
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Ella Turenne
About this listen
The audiobook edition of What Storm, What Thunder includes an exclusive introduction from author Myriam Chauncy about the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that inspired this novel, as well as the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti earlier this year. In her own voice and signature poignant and vivid prose, Myriam reflects on her efforts to humanize a catastrophe and provide listeners with a means to understand the incredible strength and spirit of a nation in crisis.
“Sublime. A striking and formidable novel by one of our most brilliant writers and storytellers.” (Edwidge Danticat)
The earth had buckled and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination.
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster - Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all. Artfully weaving together these lives, witness is given to the desolation wreaked by nature and by man.
Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and - at the same time - an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.
©2021 Myriam J.A. Chancy (P)2021 Spiegel & Grau by Spotify AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
If I Survive You
- By: Jonathan Escoffery
- Narrated by: Torian Brackett
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
-
-
Good except for the ending
- By Morris Nelms on 11-20-22
-
The Five Wounds
- A Novel
- By: Kirstin Valdez Quade
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and 33-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his 15-year-old daughter, Angel, shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.
-
-
yes!
- By Ally on 03-13-22
-
How Beautiful We Were
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards, Dion Graham, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests.
-
-
As relevant as it is heart-wrenching
- By Anonymous User on 10-18-21
By: Imbolo Mbue
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Olga Dies Dreaming
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, Armando Riesco
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo” are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular Congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
-
-
Funny, romantic, serious, substantial—all of these things and more
- By Diana on 01-07-22
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
-
If I Survive You
- By: Jonathan Escoffery
- Narrated by: Torian Brackett
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
-
-
Good except for the ending
- By Morris Nelms on 11-20-22
-
The Five Wounds
- A Novel
- By: Kirstin Valdez Quade
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and 33-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his 15-year-old daughter, Angel, shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.
-
-
yes!
- By Ally on 03-13-22
-
How Beautiful We Were
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards, Dion Graham, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests.
-
-
As relevant as it is heart-wrenching
- By Anonymous User on 10-18-21
By: Imbolo Mbue
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Olga Dies Dreaming
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, Armando Riesco
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo” are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular Congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
-
-
Funny, romantic, serious, substantial—all of these things and more
- By Diana on 01-07-22
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Black Cake
- A Novel
- By: Charmaine Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman, Simone Mcintyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
-
-
Wonderful Listen
- By Regina on 02-04-22
-
Beyond the Door of No Return
- A Novel
- By: David Diop, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Dion Graham, Mark Bramhall, Adenrele Ojo, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman’s name: Maram. The key to this mysterious woman’s identity is Adanson’s unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant.
-
-
A lovely love story
- By Jake Greenberg on 01-28-24
By: David Diop, and others
-
This Other Eden
- By: Paul Harding
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.
-
-
Painfully overwritten
- By WPH on 02-24-23
By: Paul Harding
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.
-
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
Augustown
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Dona Croll
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ma Taffy may be blind, but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do.
-
-
SUPERB
- By ** on 06-25-17
By: Kei Miller
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
A Conspiracy of Mothers
- A Novel
- By: Colleen van Niekerk
- Narrated by: Kineta Kunutu
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 1994, and South Africa is in political turmoil as its first democratic election looms. Against a backdrop of apartheid and racial violence, traumatized artist Yolanda Petersen returns from the Appalachian foothills to the land of her youth at the behest of her mother. While there Yolanda longs to reconnect with her estranged daughter, Ingrid, the product of an illegal mixed-race affair with a white man. But Ingrid is missing, and as Yolanda quickly discovers, she isn’t the only woman in Cape Town desperate to protect her own.
-
-
Color should not matter
- By Ilene M. Vinikoor on 01-24-24
-
How to Say Babylon
- A Memoir
- By: Safiya Sinclair
- Narrated by: Safiya Sinclair
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure. For him, a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.
-
-
Beautifully written. Powerful story.
- By Brenda Barbour on 10-22-23
By: Safiya Sinclair
-
The Sentence
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting.
-
-
Addictive and surprising
- By Amazon Customer on 11-25-21
By: Louise Erdrich
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
-
Nightcrawling
- A Novel
- By: Leila Mottley
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.
-
-
Metaphors - getcher Metaphors
- By Nicole Del Sesto on 08-09-22
By: Leila Mottley
Related to this topic
-
Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
-
-
Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
-
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
-
-
Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
-
The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
-
-
Great Hmong history, lousy literature
- By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
-
-
Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
-
Creatures of Passage
- By: Morowa Yejidé
- Narrated by: Morowa Yejidé
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, 10-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man".
-
-
This is the one
- By just_watching on 04-27-21
By: Morowa Yejidé
-
The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
-
-
Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
-
Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
-
-
Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
-
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
-
-
Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
-
The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
-
-
Great Hmong history, lousy literature
- By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
-
-
Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
-
Creatures of Passage
- By: Morowa Yejidé
- Narrated by: Morowa Yejidé
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, 10-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man".
-
-
This is the one
- By just_watching on 04-27-21
By: Morowa Yejidé
-
The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
-
-
Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
-
The Past Is Never
- A Novel
- By: Tiffany Quay Tyson
- Narrated by: Devon Sorvari
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.
-
-
Intriguing Southern gothic tale
- By Robert Jason on 03-11-20
-
A Nail Through The Heart
- A Poke Rafferty Thriller
- By: Timothy Hallinan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
-
-
Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
-
A Girl Is a Body of Water
- By: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- Narrated by: Tovah Ott
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
International award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and - most importantly - how they find their way back to each other. In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta - her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts - but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow.
-
-
African narrators for African novels!
- By Lynn on 04-24-21
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
-
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
Before You Knew My Name
- A Novel
- By: Jacqueline Bublitz
- Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When she arrived in New York on her eighteenth birthday carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Now, just one month later, she is the city’s latest Jane Doe. She may be dead but that doesn’t mean her story is over. Meanwhile, Ruby Jones is also trying to reinvent herself. After travelling halfway around the world, she’s lonelier than ever in the Big Apple. Until she stumbles upon a woman’s body by the Hudson River, and suddenly finds herself unbreakably tied to the unknown dead woman.
-
-
Excellent
- By cristina on 11-11-22
-
Trashlands
- By: Alison Stine
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: Garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker", pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.
-
-
Trashlands
- By Richard W. Carlson on 01-10-23
By: Alison Stine
-
The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
-
-
My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
-
We Are Not from Here
- By: Jenny Torres Sanchez
- Narrated by: Marisa Blake
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulga has his dreams. Chico has his grief. Pequeña has her pride. And these three teens have one another. But none of them have illusions about the town they've grown up in. Even with the love of family, threats lurk around every corner. And when those threats become all too real, the trio knows they have no choice but to run: from their country, from their families, from their beloved home. Crossing from Guatemala through Mexico, they follow the route of La Bestia, the perilous train system that might deliver them to a better life - if they are lucky enough to survive the journey.
-
-
this book broke my heart and I love it.
- By Anonymous User on 03-29-22
-
The Parted Earth
- By: Anjali Enjeti
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.
-
-
Riveting
- By MSE on 05-14-21
By: Anjali Enjeti
-
The Song Poet
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until one day a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good.
-
-
Beautiful, full of sadness, power, and heart.
- By Melissa L. Magana on 04-27-17
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
A Lush and Seething Hell
- Two Tales of Cosmic Horror
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales - both never-before-published in print or audio - that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul.
-
-
Great idea, tarnished by modern politics
- By Phil on 04-28-21
-
The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
-
-
Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
What listeners say about What Storm, What Thunder
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ooHIoo
- 02-09-22
View of a World I Did Not Know
These wonderfully interwoven characters showed me different aspects of a land I knew nothing about. The author brought me to know and care about each through this catastrophic event. A worthy read.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lauren B
- 10-15-21
Absolutely stunning read!
This was my first historical fiction novel and it was one of those books that really makes you take a hard look at yourself. I felt like I gained a new appreciation for the artistry of writing and think Chancey did a fabulous job of developing her characters! The speaker was slow and deliberate with her words, really drawing you in with her expression. Fantastic read.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- AuthorAnnaBella
- 03-15-22
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
-Frederick Douglass (1852)
On January 12th, 2010, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale unleashed its wrath on Haiti. The devastation is insurmountable - a scene of indescribable life-altering trauma and disaster. Myriam J. A. Chancy author of What Storm What Thunder skillfully crafted a fictional novel with beautiful prose and rich themes depicting beauty within a disaster. Each theme honing on life-altering issues which included well-researched interjections of historical facts throughout the novel; all tied in effectively with current events. With clear and concise prose, the author navigates deftly through a complex narrative of Biblical, spiritual beliefs, scientific evidence, symbolism and so much more to shed light on something akin to Armageddon. The earthquake, often referred to as Douz, was told through the life experiences of ten main characters - all integral to the flow of the story. Ms. Chancy gave credence to the story as she allowed the characters to share their life experiences pre, intra, and post-earthquake, in Haiti and abroad.
"If you don't speak for the dead, who will?" - Concussion (2015) This novel was successful in eulogizing the estimated 300,000 individuals who succumbed to the devastation of the earthquake.
"And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great." Revelation 16: 21
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Simone D.
- 12-12-23
heart wrenching
The author takes us with several characters from all walks of life as they experience the Jan 12 2010 earthquake in Haiti and its aftermath. The book was heart wrenching , bringing to life personal experiences that may have only been reported as statistics by the international media. I enjoyed the narration, the accents, the use of Haitian Kreyol and real place names. What a resilient nation!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Barbara S
- 11-30-21
emotionally moving!
On Jan. 12, 2010, Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake that killed 300,000 and left millions destitute. I recall that earthquake and remember feeling very terrible for those poor people. Author Myriam J.A. Chancy has created an impressive novel that illuminates how that event crushed the souls of Haitians.
That event is akin to the USA’s 9/11. All Haitians remember exactly what they were doing and where they were when the earthquake hit or when they heard of the earthquake. Those who lived in Haiti are still haunted. Chancy tells that story through ten people. Each character’s story shows the levels of grief and tragedy endured from “the Event”. Some of the characters are interconnected. Chancy also includes Haitians living abroad and how their horror was multiplied by not being able to contact anyone in Haiti: are my friends and family alive? Are they hurt?
The first story, for me, was emotionally shattering: a mother who witnesses her two girls consumed by the earth and her little boy crushed. Her husband has left her, and she is alone, mourning with such force that your heart breaks. She is left alone in the dangerous displaced-person’s camp. Another character in this camp is a 15-year-old girl who hides from the packs of pillaging boys and men. Rape is frequent.
Chancy weaves other characters in the story in differing layers of desperation. I was crushed while listening to the audio of this story. Ella Turenne narrates the story with emotion. If I have one quibble, it’s that she used her voice for male characters’ thoughts. If they spoke, she used a male voice, but their inner musings were her own.
I strongly recommend this story, either in written form or the audio. That said, I wished I would have read it since I am more of a visual learner. Chancy’s prose are beautiful. This story illuminated the devastating impact that continues to ravage Haiti.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- nancy
- 12-26-21
Mesi Anpil
I am a foreigner who came to Haiti on January 27, 2010 wanting to help. Haiti and her people captured my heart and is forever a part of my life.
This account of these individuals and their connections captures my experience of the stories I carry and the language and culture I respect.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 01-20-22
Difficult
I tried three different times to listen to this story. I thought perhaps it was my frame of mind at each attempt that colored my response, but I am not sure. All I heard was anger, rejection and pessimism. With the world's current situation, I couldn't finish the tale. Maybe someday I will try again.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!