Discover Best Sellers Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary

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Title: The Lower River

Author: Paul Theroux

Narrator: Jefferson Mays

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-09-12

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 30 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A titan of American letters, Paul Theroux wowed audiences and critics with his modern classic The Mosquito Coast. Its captivating thematic cousin, The Lower River, stars Ellis Hock, a man whose dreams of world travel and humanitarianism in the Peace Corps were dashed when he returned home to assume control of his family's business. Now with his wife having left and his life stagnant, Ellis makes the fateful decision to travel back to the small African village he once called home. Yet the happiness and fulfillment he seeks remain elusive.

Members Reviews:

Disappointed

What would have made The Lower River better?

It should have ended right in the middle. The halfway point had a more compelling ending and the second half of the book dragged.

What was most disappointing about Paul Therouxs story?

I began to loath the protagonist. The story needed an unhappy ending.

Have you listened to any of Jefferson Mayss other performances before? How does this one compare?

It compares very well. He is a great storyteller.

You didnt love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The premise was interesting. The first half was compelling.

Any additional comments?

I had high expectations before reading the book. It might have been better with lower expectations.

Very gifted author

I have read all of his books. I was hooked once I read Mosquito Coast. This narrator brings the story to life, So much more than just reading the words on a page.

A nice adventure

The hero ,after a long married life, and a successful business career as a tailor; decides to return to Malawi, where he was once a teacher.He is disappointed in the deterioration of the former promising place.He attempts some renovations in an attempt to help the people.Instead he is tricked by the locals and is basically trapped by them.Their plan is to bleed him of all of his money and self worth..His extensive knowledge of snakes enables him to keep a safe distance from them. Several escape attempts are thwarted and his contact with some unfriendly aide workers makes his situation seem hopeless,since they don't do anything to rescue him from his captors talons.I don''t want to spoil the ending,so I won't reveal any more.As an avid Theroux fan and a fellow teacher abroad I endorse this particular book as one of his better fictional works.I still think his best stuff has been the railway journeys,but this was entertaining and even though it is fiction some of it is of course loosely based on the authors illustrious life as a teacher in Malawi.

Pathetic character

I'm a huge fan of Paul Theroux and I've read all his fiction and non-fiction, I loved Dark Star, but this book was almost unreadable because his star character is such a weak, pathetic sniveling sob. If it was non fiction it would be good, but why write fiction with such a despicable character? I guess a writer gets to pick his characters and develop them anyway he wants in the name of art, but does the reader have to suffer as a result.

Haunting message about aid to Africa

One of the best books I have ever read or listened to. From the minute Ellis Hock arrived in Africa till the minute he ..... (won't give the end away!) I was spellbound by this haunting tale. Paul Theroux is a first class story teller and Jefferson Mays' narration superb.

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Title: Sorry Please Thank You: Stories

Author: Charles Yu

Narrator: James Yaegashi, Johnathon Ross, Mark Nelson, Ramon De Ocampo, Richard Poe, Johnny Heller

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-24-12

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 14 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

New York Times Notable Book author Charles Yu wrote the best-selling novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. In his stunning, often humorous, collection Sorry Please Thank You, Yu draws on pop culture and science to make incisive observations about society - and to offer touching insight into the human condition. In two of Yus remarkable stories, he focuses on a big-box-store night-shift employee with girl trouble and a company that outsources grief for profit.

Members Reviews:

A forgettable short story collection

Charles Yu is trying hard to write in the vernacular of a Philip K. Dick or Kurt Vonnegut (sci-fi as satire) but mostly fails.

I read this book a few months ago and I have no memory of a memorable story or even anything that made me laugh. With the abundance of quality short fiction out there this is definitely a pass.

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Titel: Über Bord

Autor:: Ingrid Noll

Erzähler: Uta Halland

Format: Unabridged

Spieldauer: 6 hrs and 46 mins

Sprache: Deutsch

Veröffentlichungsdatum: 07-23-12

Herausgeber: Diogenes Verlag AG

Kategorien: Fiction, Literary

Zusammenfassung des Herausgebers:

Eine marode Villa, Geldsorgen, eine betagte Mutter, zwei Töchter mit unpassenden Freunden, eine schlecht bezahlte, langweilige Stelle beim Einwohnermeldeamt - so sieht Ellens trister Alltag aus. Da sie geschieden und nicht mehr jung ist, erscheint ihr die Zukunft nicht gerade in rosigem Glanz. Nur ein Märchenprinz könnte sie retten, Ellen aber mag nicht an Wunder glauben. Da taucht ein gutaussehender Mann auf und behauptet, ihr Halbbruder zu sein. Dank einiger Gentests kommen erstaunliche Familiengeheimnisse ans Licht. Die Einladung zu einer Mittelmeer-Kreuzfahrt erscheint Ellen als Höhepunkt ihres Lebens. Doch nicht nur die Illusion einer letzten großen Liebe geht über Bord...

©2012 Diogenes Verlag (P)2012 Diogenes Verlag

Kritik Bewertungen:

Familienromane mit Katastrophen, so könnte man Ingrid Nolls Romane bezeichnen - mit flottem Sprachwitz und listigem Sarkasmus.

-- Westfalenpost

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Title: Office Girl

Author: Joe Meno

Narrator: Julia Whelan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-17-12

Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 19 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

No one dies in Office Girl. Nobody talks about the international political situation. There is no mention of any economic collapse. Instead, this novel is about young people doing interesting things in the final moments of the last century.

Odile is a lovely 23-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a 25-year-old shirker who's most happy capturing the endless noises of the city on his out-of-date tape recorder. Together they decide to start their own art movement in defiance of a contemporary culture made dull by both the tedious and the obvious. Set in February 1999, Office Girl is the story of two people caught between the uncertainty of their futures and the all-too-brief moments of modern life.

Critic Reviews:

"High on quirk and hipster cred, the novel is light as air, surprisingly unpretentious, and extremely kind to its larky, irony-addled protagonists...endearing." (Publishers Weekly)

"...an instant hipster staple." (Marie Claire)

"Fresh and sharply observed, Office Girl is a love story on bicycles, capturing the beauty of individual moments and the magic hidden in everyday objects and people. Joe Meno will make you stop and notice the world. And he will make you wonder." (Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief)

Members Reviews:

Interesting but not great

The plot was vaguely interesting and at first you really get sucked in to these kids lives then towards the end the story just kid of fizzles out. Ending was kind of dreary and rushed.

Great work by Joe!

Author is fabulous! Reading is ok. I would hate to see a movie with a different ending.

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Title: East of Denver

Author: Gregory Hill

Narrator: Joey Collins

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-05-12

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Gregory Hill won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for East of Denver, which received widespread acclaim for its darkly humorous voice and richly drawn characters.

Shakespeare Williams heads home to his familys farm in eastern Colorado and finds his widowed, senile father living in squalor. Reconnecting with his high school buddies, Shakespeare hatches a semiserious plan to save the failing farm by robbing the bank that has been slowly sucking the farm dry.

Members Reviews:

Depressing

What disappointed you about East of Denver?

If you want to get into a grey mood this is the book to read.

Would you ever listen to anything by Gregory Hill again?

No

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Title: Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain

Subtitle: Stories

Author: Lucia Perillo

Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-24-12

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A stunning debut from an award-winning poet.

Populating a small town in the Pacific Northwest, the characters in Lucia Perillos story collection all resist giving the world what it expects of them - and are surprised when the world comes roaring back.

An addict trapped in a country house becomes obsessed with vacuum cleaners and the people who sell them door-to-door. An abandoned woman seeks consolation in tales of armed robbery told by one of her fellow suburban housewives. An accidental mother struggles to answer her daughters badgering about her paternity. And in three stories readers meet Louisa, a woman with Down syndrome who serves as an accomplice to her younger sisters sexual exploits and her aging mothers fantasies of revenge.

Together,Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brainis a sharp-edged, witty testament to the ambivalence of emotions, the way they pull in directions that often cancel one another out or twist their subjects into knots. In lyrical prose, Perillo draws on her training as a naturalist and a poet to map the terrain of the comic and the tragic, asking how we mark the boundaries between these two zones. Whats funny, whats heartbreaking, and who gets to decide?

Lucia Perillo has published five books of poetry and a collection of essays. Her book Inseminating the Elephant won the Bobbitt Prize and was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain is her first work of fiction. She lives in Olympia, Washington.

Critic Reviews:

Lucia Perillo isnt just a strikingly original poet; shes a top-notch fiction writer as well. The stories in this bleakly funny and harrowing collection are reminiscent of both Raymond Carver and Denis Johnson, but the vision than animates them is Perillos own, unique and unmistakable. (Tom Perrotta,New York Timesbest-selling author)

A lyrical short story collection that reveals a genius for plot and metaphorPerillo shows a supple imagination and wit as she explores fate and its ironies. Perillo strikes a glorious balance between wryly intelligent prose and emotional force, recalling Alice Munro at her best. This volumes vibrant stories demonstrate the full potential of the short-story form when put in the hands of a true artist. (Publishers Weekly)

These tales are as beautifully patterned as poetry, as saturated in feeling, open to ambiguity, and laced with electrifying images. Here, too, are Perillos distinctively knowing humor and naturalists eye, making for startling stories that, like a drop of pond water under a microscope, teem with unexpected and intricate life. (Booklist)

Members Reviews:

This is a book that I couldn't put down!

This is a book that I couldn't put down! It took me to a world of fascinating imagery and realism. Reading this book, made me feel that I personally know the characters in it. Lucia Perillo can say, in a few words, what other writers need volumes to express. Read this book for insight, pleasure and for an education from a fabulous short story writer.

Intelligent and offbeat stories

I have read many short story collections and this collection rates in the top ten. Dark humor abounds as does sadness.

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Title: The Innocents

Author: Francesca Segal

Narrator: Rosalyn Landor

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-05-12

Publisher: Hyperion

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 29 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, 28-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both 16 and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry.

To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune: she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community - a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adams role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.

But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachels younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than hed care to admit.

Members Reviews:

Wow

I couldn't quit listening .. I had to know what would happen next. It it me was like seeing inside the mind of a man. A man who had such deep misguided feelings . I got angry at him several times. I also got so angry at the women. I could see some things unfolding the emotions that let their paths but I could not grasp how one lets their emotions go so wild. I wanted their common sense to wake up but alas when love and sex is involved things rarely go as they should ..

Don't Waste Your Time

Would you try another book from Francesca Segal and/or Rosalyn Landor?

Probably Not

Has The Innocents turned you off from other books in this genre?

No. But this book was BORING.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Male voices were awful. Hebrew pronunciation was often dreadful.

What character would you cut from The Innocents?

Jasper

Any additional comments?

Can't believe this was published.

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Title: Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

Author: Lee Smith

Narrator: Debra Monk, Julia Gibson, Kate Forbes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-04-12

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Virginia native Lee Smith has won two O. Henry Awards, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and the Robert Penn Warren Prize for her engaging works.

A collection of 14 tales - both new stories and previously published favorites - Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger is sure to delight listeners with its warm humor and unforgettable characters.

Critic Reviews:

Each tale is beautifully honed... (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Excellent book of short stories

Lee Smith has always been one of my favorite authors and so I was thrilled to find her newest book of short stories--I don't know how I missed it when it first came out. I meant to read a story or two here and there while reading other stuff, but once I started it, I couldn't put it down.

I don't think there was a story in the book I didn't love. The characters and sense of place were spot on. No one, no one does the south like Lee Smith. She gets the dialect perfect and doesn't overuse it or use it in a manner that sticks out. I live in the south and I know every person in this book. I just didn't know them so well before I read these stories.

As other reviewers have noted, I feel Smith's writing talent shines even more brightly in short story form. These stories are brilliantly written and feel complete when they're done. Every one was, for me, like a small novella and complete in itself. This is so hard to do and Smith makes it seem effortless.

Overall, a completely captivating and entertaining book of short stories. Reading this made me remember how much I love her other books, so I will be going back and rereading my favorites. I absolutely love this book and this author. Hope she has a new book coming my way soon. I'd give this book ten stars if I could!

Lee Smith exceptional writer

Lee Smith is a wonderful writer. Her characters come alive. However, the plots go nowhere. This is often the case with literary short stories but it bugs me.

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

I enjoyed this book, but it certainly wasn't up to Lee Smith's usual standard. Usually though, I love her work.

A Perfect Summer Read

These Stories remind me of when i use to ride Greyhound across the country when i was younger. they remind me of people i'd meet on the bus, where we'd exchange life stories, often tales you'd only tell a stranger you'd never see again. 100 mile friendships every bit as memorable as lifelong ones.

they are little slices of life, funny, bittersweet, or melancholy. often all three at once. having lived in the south most of my life i recognize characters, and have seen similar stories play out to a dozen different endings.

this is my first time reading Lee Smith, but it won't be the last.

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (Shannon Ravenel Books)

Southern comfort

Great southern-style short story reading. Perfect for summer reading. These are funny, well developed characters; the writing is superb and enjoyable.

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Title: Songs for the Butcher's Daughter

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Peter Manseau

Narrator: Mirron Willis

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-17-12

Publisher: Peter L Manseau

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a winner of the National Jewish Book Award, the Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature, and the Ribalow Prize for Fiction. The novel was also a finalist for France's Prix Medicis and the Center for Fiction's First Novel of the Year Award.

In a warehouse full of forgotten books, a man at the beginning of his adult life - and the end of his career rope - becomes involved with a woman, a language, and a great lie that will define his future. Most auspiciously of all, he runs across Itsik Malpesh, a 90-something Russian immigrant who claims to be the last Yiddish poet in America.

When a set of accounting ledgers in which Malpesh has written his memoirs surfaces - 22 volumes brimming with adventure, drama, deception, passion, and wit - the young man is compelled to translate them, telling Malpesh's story as his own life unfolds, and bringing together two paths that coincide in shocking and unexpected ways. Moving from revolutionary Russia, to New York's Depression-era Lower East Side, to millennium's-end Baltimore with drama, adventure, and boisterous, feisty charm to spare, the unpeeling of this friendship is a story of the entire 20th century.

For fans of Nicole Krauss, Nathan Englander, Richard Powers, Amy Bloom, and Lore Segal, this book will amaze listeners at every turn. Narrated by two poets (one who doesn't know he is and one who doesn't know he isn't), it is a wise and warm exploration of the constant surprises and ineluctable ravages of time. It's a book about religion, love, and typesetting - how one passion can be used to goad and thwart the other - and most of all, about how faith in the power of words can survive even the death of a language.

A novel of faith lost and hope found in translation, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is at once an immigrant's epic saga, a love story for the ages, a Yiddish-inflected laughing-through-tears tour of world history for Jews and Gentiles alike, and a testament to Manseau's ambitious genius.

Critic Reviews:

"The winner of numerous awards, Peter Manseau's stunning novel features a young Catholic who is hired to translate the memoirs of Itzik Malpesh into English. Malpesh, supposedly the last Yiddish poet in America, captivates the translator, and their lives collide in gripping and unpredictable ways. The book, truly an homage to Yiddish, would present a challenge for any narrator. Mirron Willis adeptly deals with the complexities of the story and creates credible accents for Malpesh and the other characters. Equally important, Willis's performance captures the depth and intellect of Manseau's story. The result is a highly entertaining book with broad appeal." (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

What was the Narrator Thinking

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Interesting story, but the narrator chose to speak in a halting slow--really slow--manner whenever for the main character. The cadence was off for all of it. I listened at 2X speed which helped a bit, but what I really wanted to do is go out and buy the book so I could read it in peace.

What didnt you like about Mirron Williss performance?

See Above

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Title: Stay Awake

Subtitle: Stories

Author: Dan Chaon

Narrator: Kirby Heyborne

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-07-12

Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 19 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection - and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations. A father's life is upended by his son's night terrors - and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother; a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of "empty-nest syndrome". They exist in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake.

Critic Reviews:

"With this arresting collection, Chaon again demonstrates his mastery of the short story.... [It] brings readers fantastically close, slowly drawing them into the anxiety or loneliness or remorse of his characters, and building great anticipation for the twists to come." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Nice ideas, but no punch

Would you try another book from Dan Chaon and/or Kirby Heyborne?

Perhaps, if I had nothing else to try, but probably not.

What could Dan Chaon have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

These stories seemed to go nowhere. They lack resolution and closure. I couldn't tell when the story was over.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Narration was good. I have no complaints with that.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

disappointment. The story ideas presented had real potential, but didn't reach it.

Stories that didn't keep me awake

What did you like best about Stay Awake? What did you like least?

It was something to listen to and there were twists and turns in the story... but as each story ended I was left wondering.

What could Dan Chaon have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

I thought the ending of one story and the beginning of another story was too close together... I didn't get a sense a few times that the previous story had ended and now I was listening to another story...

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No, I don' t think so.

Any additional comments?

I followed the stories and they were different from most stories... I was wondering if there was a moral or teaching point of the stories... At some points, this author reminded me or Flannery O'Connor and her short stories.