Discover Best Sellers Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary

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Title: See How Small

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Scott Blackwood

Narrator: Rengin Altay

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-20-15

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 20 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

One late autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls who are working the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. See How Small tells the stories of the survivors - family, witnesses, and suspects - who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Justice remains elusive in their world, human connection tenuous.

Hovering above the aftermath of their deaths are the three girls. They watch over the town and make occasional visitations, trying to connect with and prod to life those they left behind. "See how small a thing it is that keeps us apart," they say. A master of compression and lyrical precision, Scott Blackwood has surpassed himself with this haunting, beautiful, and enormously powerful new novel.

Critic Reviews:

"Scott Blackwood is a wizard, and in See How Small he puts his skills to dazzling use as he anatomizes a town and a crime. Best of all is the deep empathy he brings to his characters, innocent and guilty, wise and confused; all of them are given the grace of his understanding. A vivid and astonishing novel." (Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy)

"Horrible deaths of the innocent, and the various means and tactics by which the living manage to go on in the aftermath of unsolved horror, form the heart of Scott Blackwood's haunted and haunting novel, See How Small. His prose is crisp and his narrative approach is fresh and inventive, calmly pushing forward, with characters rendered so convincingly you think about sending cards of condolence or calling with advice on the investigation." (Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone and The Maid's Version)

"Acute and nimble stories... so honest as they capture the dapple of emotions and perceptions that cross the mind like sunlight and shadow on a river... an impressive, accomplished debut." (Julie Grey, New York Times Book Review)

Members Reviews:

Hard to follow

I picked this book because it was an Amazon pick of the month, but I really didn't enjoy it. I'm not sure if it would be better to read the book, rather than listen, but I couldn't follow. I was constantly rewinding to figure out what was going on.

The story follows multiple characters and when the story switches to follow another character, it's hard to tell. Some characters don't even make sense. The writing sounded pretty, but the content was lacking.

Worst piece of crap ever

Do not waste your money on this plotless crap. This book is an injustice to the actual victims of this crime. Our book club was disgusted with lack of thought, process, or editing that went into this book. The author should find a new profession.

Confusing and disjointed

What was most disappointing about Scott Blackwoods story?

I was expecting more of a true crime type account of the Austin yogurt shop murders, but that's probably my fault for not understanding the nature of the book. I bought it based on a short blurb I read in People magazine in a doctor's office, and the magazine indicated that the book was "about the Austin yogurt shop murders."

Any additional comments?

While I usually enjoy the multiple, interwoven storyline format, I found this book confusing and disjointed.

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Title: Apron Strings

Author: Mary Morony

Narrator: Wendy Hilton

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-28-14

Publisher: Westropp Press

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

At seven years old, Sallee Mackey is wary of the grown-ups that populate her Southern world-especially her mother, Ginny-and with good reason.

Ginny is flat out dangerous and not the kind of dangerous that threatens mortal harm, though at times death might be preferred. It's far worse than that, especially if you cross her in one of her moods. Sallee learns early on to rely on stealth and a watchful eye-skills absolutely essential to living with her family. The one grown-up exception might be Ethel, the black maid who has been with the family for two generations. But even Ethel has secrets.

Ethel and Ginny's relationship goes back to girlhood. While Ginny has conveniently forgotten that fact, Sallee hasn't. Like a hound on a scent, Sallee questions Ethel constantly about the mysteries of their shared history. Only Mr. Dabney, the bigoted neighbor next door knows that he, too, shares in that same past.

As martial and neighborhood tensions rise, the family is beset with a number of menacing events, and Sallee discovers growing schisms inside her own home. Her parents' marriage dissolves, and Joe Mackey, Sallee's father, asks Ethel to testify on his behalf in a custody suit. Ethel's conflicted loyalties threaten to destroy not only herself but the children she loves.

Members Reviews:

Great read!

Great read!

The characters were very well established. I enjoyed this author's work. Very well written

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Titel: Untreue

Autor:: Paulo Coelho

Erzähler: Luise Helm

Format: Unabridged

Spieldauer: 6 hrs and 33 mins

Sprache: Deutsch

Veröffentlichungsdatum: 09-24-14

Herausgeber: Diogenes Verlag AG

Bewertung: 3 von 5 von 1 Stimmen

Kategorien: Fiction, Literary

Zusammenfassung des Herausgebers:

Linda versteht sich selbst nicht mehr. Müde und lustlos schleppt sie sich durch ihr Leben. Dabei hat sie vieles, was es zum Glücklichsein braucht: eine gesicherte Existenz, einen wunderbaren Ehemann, süße Kinder, einen spannenden Beruf. Doch sie spürt keine Begeisterung, und es fällt ihr immer schwerer, Fröhlichkeit vorzutäuschen. Sie beginnt von einem anderen Leben zu träumen.

Durch die Begegnung mit einem alten Jugendfreund gerät Linda in einen Strudel der Leidenschaft, der sie alles riskieren und in die Abgründe ihrer Seele blicken lässt.

Muss man manchmal untreu sein, um sich selbst wieder treu zu werden?

©2014 Diogenes Verlag (P)2014 Diogenes Verlag

Mitglieder Bewertungen:

Einfach genial

Die Liebe, das Leben, eine unendliche Reise durch Zeit und Raum, kann uns, unsere Welt verändern, hier und jetzt, und in aller Zukunft.

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Title: F

Author: Daniel Kehlmann

Narrator: Robert Fass, Jim Meskimen, Bronson Pinchot

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-26-14

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

From the young, internationally acclaimed author of Measuring the World comes a stunning, tragicomic novel about three brothers, their relationship to their distant father, and their individual fates and struggles in the modern world.

One day Arthur Friedland piles his three sons into the car and drives them to see the Great Lindemann, Master of Hypnosis. Protesting that he doesn't believe in magic even as he is led onto the stage, Arthur nevertheless experiences something. Later that night, while his family sleeps, he takes his passport, empties all the money from his bank account, and vanishes. In time, still absent from his family, he beings to publish novels and becomes an internationally renowned author. His sons grow into men who manifest their inexplicable loss - Martin becomes a priest who does not believe in God; Ivan, a painter in constant artistic crisis; Eric, a businessman given to hallucinations and a fear of ghosts - even as they struggle to understand their father's disappearance and make their own places in the world.

Members Reviews:

strange book about characters with some pretty serious psychological issues

strange book about characters with some pretty serious psychological issues. If you like existentialism or absurdism this may be the book for you

A LOT of phylosophic ideas. Interesting. women are ...

A LOT of phylosophic ideas. Interesting. women are the strong sex. Males tend to disappear.

Great read!

Beautifully written and beautifully plotted.

Five Stars

Interesting and bit heady, but well written,

meandering

Ok story, interesting end but it felt like it never quite took off. Read for book club but I would not recommend to anyone.

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Title: The Bend of the World

Author: Jacob Bacharach

Narrator: Jacob Bacharach

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-29-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In the most audacious literary debut to come out of the Steel City since The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, we meet Peter Morrison, twenty-nine and comfortably adrift in a state of not-quite-adulthood, less concerned about the general direction of his life than with his suspicion that all his closest relationships are the products of inertia. He and his girlfriend float along in the same general direction, while his parents are acting funny, though his rich, hypochondriac grandmother is still good for admission to the better parties. He spends his days clocking into Global Solutions (a firm whose purpose remains unnervingly ambiguous) and his weekends listening to the half-imagined rants of his childhood best friend, Johnny. An addict and conspiracy theorist, Johnny believes Pittsburgh is a "nexus of intense magical convergence" and is playing host to a cabal of dubious politicians, evil corporate schemes, ancient occult rites, and otherwise inexplicable phenomena, such as the fact that people really do keep seeing UFOs hovering over the city.

Against this strange background, Peter meets Mark and Helen, a slightly older couple, new to town, whose wealth and glamour never fully conceal the suggestion of something sinister, and with whom he becomes quickly infatuated. In The Bend of the World, Philip K. Dick meets Michael Chabon, and Jacob Bacharach creates an appropriately hilarious, bizarre, and keenly observed portrait of life on the edge of thirty in the adolescent years of twenty-first-century America.

Members Reviews:

Great stuff

This book knocked me out. Of its many virtues; I guess 2 really jumped out at me. First, I didn't read it for laughs, but it made me laugh out loud more than any book in recent memory. On the surface it teems with closely observed, sharply rendered details, rare insights, commentary on modern life etc. that in addition to being perceptive and valuable are extremely funny. Second, the characters are beautifully realized. Most authors, and, sadly, most TV writers, can't do a passable reproduction of "clever"; the few who are able to pull off even one type of clever character can make a whole career out of rehashing that one character (e.g. Salinger). Bacharach here presents several razor-sharp, witty, wry characters, all with radically different personalities and outlooks, all thoroughly believable, all arguing for their own point of view. He's able to handle this as few authors, as only the greats, really, have managed to.

Why only 4 stars, then? [*see edit below*] It seems unfinished. Or not brought to full fruition. I can't escape the feeling that this was intended to be a much larger book, that a large percentage---if not a majority, then a decisive plurality---of pages were written with the intention of it being quite a brick. I just get the inescapable feeling all through the first half that he's casting a wide, wide net, with the intention of a long and bountiful haul to follow...Then suddenly everything gets clipped, pruned, trimmed, hemmed in; then comes a final scene that's admittedly pretty great, but seems like the final scene for a much larger novel. I have no idea what the circumstances were---it doesn't seem like a first-time novelist would be under deadline pressure---maybe he just felt he was in too deep or something, and had to get on with his life? Who knows.

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Title: Em and the Big Hoom

Author: Jerry Pinto

Narrator: Neil Shah

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-24-14

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

First published by a small press in India, Jerry Pinto'sdevastatingly original debut novel has already taken the literary world by storm. Suffused with compassion, humor, and hard-won wisdom, Em and the Big Hoom is a modern masterpiece, and its American publication is certain to be one of the major literary events of the season.

Meet Imelda and Augustine, or - as our young narrator calls his unusual parents - Em and the Big Hoom. Most of the time, Em smokes endless beedies and sings her way through life. She is the sun around which everyone else orbits. But as enchanting and high-spirited as she can be, when Em's bipolar disorder seizes her she becomes monstrous, sometimes with calamitous consequences for herself and others. This accomplished debut is graceful and urgent, with a one-of-a-kind voice that will stay with listeners long after the final moments.

Members Reviews:

Em and the Big Hoom

Pinto tells the story of woman suffering from bi-polar disorder and the family who loves her. She is the very heart of her family. When she is high, their world is bright and fun-filled. When she is low, they all fall with her into the depths of a dark existence. A poignant telling of what it is like to live with and love someone with a profound mental illness. By turns funny and heartbreaking, Em and the Big Hoom will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

One Idiocyncratic family and the city of Bombay.

It's never easy to read a book about people facing mental issues. I try to be in a happy frame of mind as the book can pull you to it's depths which is only natural but Em and The Big Hoom surprised me. It's tone and content both. It made me chortle with mirth at it's sardonic humour. I'm not saying it doesnt have some sad moments but I fell in love with the dazzling Em, with Hoom by her side. Who wouldn't? The idiocyncratic Parsi family and the city of Bombay make a very intersting backdrop. Loved it.

A must read

A beautiful and poignant look at how mental illness shapes everyday lives and relationships, hopes and desires, pasts and presents. A must read!

Read this.

I absolutely loved this book.

Life Lessons with a Madwoman

As Jerry Pinto says in his fictional debutant novel named Em and the Big Hoom, the term âmadâ can mean a whole bunch of things to different people- a mad world, mad amount of work, mad laughter, mad idea, mad passion- but to have a mad mother is an altogether different story. And rightfully so, Pinto explains the power of these three letters, M.A.D and the profound effect of this circumstance on the narratorâs, that is the son, family.

Short anecdotes containing memories, conversations, âepisodes of maniaâ and ever changing emotions to the motherâs illness, and the reactions of the family members to it, are pieced together to collectively tell the story of Em, as the narrator fondly called his mother (âmâ for mother) and the âBig Hoomâ, the nickname given to his father (who often made a âhoomâ like sound when asked something).

Over the years, her illness grows from a ânervous problemâ to a ânervous break-downâ to âschizophreniaâ and ultimately to a âmanic depressionâ.

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Title: Abroad

Author: Katie Crouch

Narrator: Heather O'Neill

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-17-14

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The city of Grifonia, Italy, is swarming with secrets - thousands of years of dark, murderous secrets. Taz, a British student who has just arrived for her year abroad, thinks that she will spend her time in Italy sipping wine and taking in the rolling Umbrian hills. But she soon falls in with a cabal of posh, reckless girls - the B4 - who turn her quaint fantasies into an erotic and dangerous rush through the darkest realms of friendship and love.

Not since Donna Tartts The Secret History have we been treated to such an addictive tale of tumultuous adolescence. We see Taz scared and alone, but hungry for new experience and piqued by the thrill of living abroad. We see her roommate, the plainspoken American Claire, who worries about Tazs motives and expresses sincere concern for her safety - but everything changes when they fall for the same man. And then theres what we dont see - the perils that lurk around the corner. We dont see the secrets that friends - and lovers - keep from one another. And we dont see the force that is bigger than Taz, bigger than her friends and loves, a force that seems to be propelling them all toward a dark, awful end. Inspired by real events but tackled with grace and sharpness by a master storyteller, this is Katie Crouch at her finest.

Members Reviews:

Mean Girls + Amanda Knox + Broke Down Palace

I think the movie Mean Girls, the story/case of Amanda Knox, and certain elements of the movie Broke Down Palace embodies the plot line of this book. In fact, at the end the author notes that the book was inspired by certain events in the Amanda Knox case in Perugia, Italy. The book was well written and had a lot of interesting historical references. The summary expresses significantly more debauchery and indulgence than there actually is. The book held my interest but I was expecting a lot more adventure and extravagance.

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Title: The Boy in His Winter

Subtitle: An American Novel

Author: Norman Lock

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-13-14

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Launched into existence by Mark Twain in 1835, Huck Finn and Jim have now been transported by Norman Lock through three vital, violent, and transformative centuries of American history. As time unfurls on the river's banks, they witness decisive battles of the Civil War, the betrayal of Reconstruction's promises to the freed slaves, the crushing of the Native American nations, and the electrification of a continent. Huck, who finally comes of age when he's washed up on shore during Hurricane Katrina, narrates the story as an older and wiser man in 2077, revealing our nation's past, present, and future as Mark Twain could never have dreamed it.

The Boy in His Winter is a tour de force work of imagination, beauty, and courage that reenvisions a great American literary classic for our time.

Members Reviews:

No Words to Describe Properly

Huck Finn in name only. Twain must be turning in his grave. This book is GARBAGE!!!

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Title: The Crystal Frontier

Subtitle: A Novel in Nine Stories

Author: Carlos Fuentes, Alfred MacAdam (translator)

Narrator: David Crommett

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-29-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

From Mexicos preeminent man of letters, "a Balzacian novel in nine masterly stories" (Vanity Fair) that explores the "uneven and painful meshing of two North American cultures" (Washington Post Book World). A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Translated by Alfred Mac Adam.

Members Reviews:

the translation is very choppy (seems like it was cranked out of google translate) and many ...

Reading it side by side with the Spanish version, the translation is very choppy (seems like it was cranked out of google translate) and many punctuation marks and quotation marks are missing. But you can understand the story and ideas. However, if you know Spanish read the Spanish version.

I recommend it.

I recommend it.

Worth reading more by Fuentes

A great writer

Ambivalent novel long on poetry, short on solutions

Tedious novel in the form of nine linked stories shows Mexican life from multiple angles, none too flattering. The crystal frontier of the title is, of course, the U.S.-Mexican border; what matters here is less the border as geopolitical fact and more its impact on the Mexican psyche. The author aims his barbs at both sides of the border; there's little surprising here except perhaps for the portrayal of a disdainful Mexican upper class that couldn't care less about how the other half lives or whether it lives or starves. Book clubs will find this a useful tool for stirring up discussion on the illegal drug and immigration issues whether they read through to the end or not; those who do will be rewarded with a chapter written half in normal prose and half in surreal fragmentary lines of poetry, the effect of which is not unlike sitting through a Tarkovsky double-feature.

An exercise in empathy

An achingly beautiful, haunting series of interwoven stories...people I know, people I can imagine. Viewing events through the eyes of different people was reminiscent of Kurasawa's Rashomon. As a sucker for short stories, my favorite was the title piece.

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Title: Fallout

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Sadie Jones

Narrator: Steve West

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-29-14

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 2.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Four young people in 1970s London race toward the future, fueled by love, betrayal, and creative ambition.

Luke Kanowski is a young playwright - intense, magnetic, and eager for life. He escapes a disastrous upbringing in the northeast and, arriving in London, meets Paul Driscoll, an aspiring producer, and the beautiful, fiery Leigh Radley, the woman Paul loves.

The three set up a radical theater company, living and working together; a romantic connection forged in candlelit rehearsal rooms during power cuts and smoky late-night parties in Chelsea's run-down flats. The gritty rebellion of pub theater is fighting for its place against a West End dominated by racy revue shows and the giants of 20th-century drama.

Nina Jacobs is a fragile actress, bullied by her mother and in thrall to a controlling producer. When Luke meets Nina, he recognizes a soul in danger - but how much must he risk to save her?

Everything he has fought for - loyalty, friendship, art - is drawn into the heat of their collision. As Luke ricochets between honesty and deceit, the promise of the future and his own painful past, the fallout threatens to be immense.

Members Reviews:

"The fallout that had warped his heart."

This novel is about the failure of mother love. In the end, the point of the intersecting love triangles had not been raised in human love. Luke's mother is insane and lives in an asylum. All his best efforts cannot save her, and as an adult, he misses the connection to women as one he can successfully maintain. The charismatic Luke is drawn to Nina, abandoned to an aunt until old enough to server as the focus of her stage mother. The constellation of missed opportunities and the love that Luke is meant to find, is complex. All in all it is a witty book with some pithy and apt observatons on life and love. Many of the scenes are exceptional in their ability to touch on the realities and pains of love.

My primary problem is the central assumption that these characters can be fatally wounded from childhood. It has some patent truth, but these characters are too complex for this simple poison to shape all of a lifetime. Luke's other love interest Leigh is of a solid background and she recognizes the stain , "the fallout" of Luke's core. As beguinling as it is, the premise is just too simple to account for all the damage that these intelligent and thoughtful people wreck on each other and the world.

An author must help the reader to draw conclusions

The first part of 'Fallout' is confusing - too many quick changes of points of view, without any explanation of background. The bulk of the story, set in 1972 London, is an easy, interesting read about people trying to do something different in the world of theater. The problem is that the reasons for certain things happening was far from clear e.g. why did the various relationships come together and break apart? Yes, the author should leave much to the reader's imagination, but the author must create the atmosphere to allow the imagination to work - I don't think Sadie Jones did this. The end is very predictable.

It was recommended by a colleague so I'd expected an intelligent read ...

Disappointing. It was recommended by a colleague so I'd expected an intelligent read but what I got was voyeuristic and predictable. If you managed to get through Fifty Shades (I didn't), you'll like this book.