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Title: Alan Bennett: Stories

Subtitle: Read by Alan Bennett

Author: Alan Bennett

Narrator: Alan Bennett

Format: Original Recording

Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-01-16

Publisher: BBC Worldwide Ltd

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

A unique collection of eight Alan Bennett stories, read by the author. Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved authors and an acclaimed storyteller. This exclusive compilation includes eight of his best tales, collected together for the first time.

Here is his celebrated, iconic memoir 'The Lady in the Van'; as well as two fascinating autobiographical accounts of his family and childhood. 'Uncle Clarence' sees Bennett visiting the grave of a relative who died in Flanders in 1917; while in 'Hymn' he joins forces with composer George Fenton and the Medici String Quartet to explore his musical memories.

Bennett's incisive, acute observations shine through in his fiction too, with wry, moving and darkly humorous meditations on death ('Father! Father! Burning Bright' and 'The Laying On of Hands'), sex ('The Shielding of Mrs Forbes) and middle-age ennui ('The Clothes They Stood Up In'). His gift for affectionate satire reaches its pinnacle in 'The Uncommon Reader', a delightful tale in which the Queen discovers the pleasures of literature.

Poignant, compassionate, wise and witty, the stories included are 'The Lady in the Van', 'Uncle Clarence', 'The Clothes They Stood Up In', 'Father! Father! Burning Bright', 'Hymn', 'The Laying On of Hands', 'The Uncommon Reader' and 'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes'.

Members Reviews:

Consummate story-teller

I greatly enjoyed this collection of short stories: the pleasure enhanced by Alan Bennetts inimitable reading-style. The stories vary: some have a moral theme clothed in gentle humour, others find comedy in mundane lives and quite a few are more racy tales about homosexual relationships, a preoccupation understandable after his recent revelation about his sexual orientation after decades of discretion.

Delightfully Bennett

A collection of great Bennett stories read by Alan Bennett himself.

Each story has a twist, a turn, and lots of humour, all beautifully written and presented. Most have relationships and their links with community at their centre. Great if you're a Londoner because you recognise so much; great if you don't know London because it introduces you...

Bennett the story teller, Bennett the playwright; Bennett the humorist - all on delightful display here... Vintage Bennett it is... the listener cannot but enjoy!

A quite brilliant understated writer.

Allan Bennet is an absolute pleasure to listen to. I find his writing humourous and his narration so soothing.

Funny and touching, as to be expected of Alan Bennett

Wonderful story writing, brought to life by Alan Bennett's reading of them. Made me laugh out loud in parts.

Jjust wonderful.

Alan Bennett is our greatest playwrite and author and no one reads his work like he does. The best listen ever. 11/10

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Title: Cruelty

Author: Roald Dahl

Narrator: Adrian Scarborough, Andrew Scott, Jessica Hynes, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Heap, Richard E Grant, Stephanie Beacham

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-18-16

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

From Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail, a newly collected audiobook of his darkest stories, read by Will Self, Adrian Scarborough, Stephanie Beacham, Andrew Scott, Richard E Grant, Tamsin Greig, Mark Heap, Juliet Stevenson and Jessica Hynes.

'Cruelty has a human heart....'

Even when we mean to be kind, we can sometimes be cruel. We all have streaks of nastiness inside us. In these ten tales of cruelty, master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how and why it is we make others suffer.

Collected together for the first time, stories include 'The Great Automatic Grammatizator', 'Royal Jelly', 'Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat', 'The Swan', 'Poison', 'Skin', 'The Princess and the Poacher', 'Genesis and Catastrophe' and 'Mr Feasey'.

Dahl understood our deepest secrets, desires and fears, and Cruelty is one of four books - the rest being Lust, Deception and Madness - that explore our hidden selves.

Members Reviews:

Dark

A whole new world into Roald Dahl.

A Dark, yet Brilliant collection of stories. Be warned this isn't your childhood Roald Dahl.

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Title: Lust

Author: Roald Dahl

Narrator: Derek Jacobi, Gillian Anderson, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Mark Heap, Richard E Grant

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-18-16

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

Two husbands secretly agree to a night of passion - with each other's wives; a slighted old man takes an elaborate and chilling revenge on his tormentor; a sculpture comes between a scheming wife and her put-upon husband....

Lust highlights a domestic familiarity always on the edge of something much, much darker. Collected together for the first time, stories include 'Madame Rosette', 'Neck', 'Georgy Porgy', 'The Visitor', 'The Last Act', 'The Great Switcheroo', 'Bitch', 'Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life', 'The Ratcatcher' and 'Nunc Dimittis'.

Members Reviews:

Great selection of short stories

All the stories have a strange atmosphere but each is very clever, written by a master author and beautifully read.

Dahl!!

Very good to entertain a king. Good to read late at night. Thank you and we ll read.

Dahl for adults

Richard E. Grant is a sublime Uncle Oswald in two stories from Switch Bitch. A couple of other gems made this a really enjoyable anthology.

a master story teller

Clever stories, well written and beautifully read make this book a joy to listen to.

Fun collection of stories

The Richard E Grant stories were my favourites. A fun collection of stories by the master story teller.

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Title: Ninety-Nine Stories of God

Author: Joy Williams

Narrator: Elisabeth Rodgers

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 57 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-12-16

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 20 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind's most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.

This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It's the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass - a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams' characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for him when he's standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he's in line to get a shingles vaccination.

At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.

Members Reviews:

genius flash fiction and nonfiction stories, unconventional form

Beautiful weird and revelatory flash fictions and nonfictions, will not disappoint any fan of this author. Reminds me in form of Sarah Ruhl's 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, only the individual pieces are shorter and even more distilled. Brilliant, funny, elliptical but never pretentious, offhandedly devastating. If you are looking for an "inspirational" collection of traditional stories about God, look elsewhere.

Enriched and deepened 'Living the Questions'. Not food for thought to digest , but food for thought to wrestle with

I think she took full advantage of this opportunity between stories and novels to risk following her muse down a less-traveled creative path. It's certainly a 'novel ' contribution to the literary world, and I think a memorable one. (I must add that I enjoy rereading it on the cardio machines at the gym, so l am quite familiar with it, yet it keeps drawing me back!)

Buy it or borrow it, just read it.

I couldn't stop reading this until the end, even though none of the "stories" is much longer than a page or two. Some are only a paragraph or even a sentence. Wry, but not laugh-out-loud funny; thoughtful but sometimes baffling and always strange. Never dull. New York Times named it one of the Top Fifty Novels of 2016.

Highly recommend!

I wish it were titled otherwise because, as is, it suggests religiosity, which it is not. I would not have bought this book if I hadn't read a review that clarified it as complex engaging snippets/essays that ponder the "deeper meanings." Wonderfully provocative and deeply thought.

Dog

Outstanding stories of . . . God? or ??? Is God in everything or in our lives at all times? The stories will make you think and search.

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Title: East, West

Subtitle: Stories

Author: Salman Rushdie

Narrator: Sunil Malhotra, Steven Crossley

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-11-16

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star; Indian diplomats, who as childhood friends hatched Star Trek fantasies, must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester is caught up in murderous intrigues.

In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a redheaded Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, then in another. Yet he remains a writer who insists on our cultural complexity; who, rising beyond ideology, refuses to choose between East and West and embraces the world.

Members Reviews:

Very good short stories about the east

Very good short stories about the east, the west and all the people in the middle. Just to show that even if the context are different, people are all the same.

Brevi storie sull'est, sull'ovest e tutte le persone che si trovano in mezzo. Il modo giusto per mostrare che, anche se il contesto é differente, le persone sono sempre le stesse.

Some stories are funny, others are thought-provoking

Compilation of short stories written by Rushdie. Comparing and contrasting Western (Britain) experiences to Eastern (India). Some stories are funny, others are thought-provoking.

I love to be entertained

This book was both entertaining and thought provoking. Each story drew me in in different but equally exciting ways, and after each I mulled it over in my head.

Great book and great quality

Great read and a very good quality and good price for this book. Everyone should read Salman Rushdie, he is great!

A world in every sentence

East West is a short collection of short stories by Salman Rushdie. But there is nothing small or even limited about the themes they cover, nor anything bland about the palette Rushdie uses to colour his ideas. They were published in the mid-1990s, when the writer was deep into the confines of the fatwa that threatened his life. It is thus refreshing to reflect on the wide and poignant use of humour trough the collection.

The stories are enigmatically arranged in three groups entitled East, West and East-West. They thus form a kind of triptych. In East we visit territory well known to readers of Rushdie. He is in the sub-continent, addressing notions of tradition and culture, notions that are interpreted and reinterpreted by change, personal ambition and by familial and religious associations.

In West, Salman Rushdie presents Yorick's view of Hamlet and an encounter between Catholic Isabella and her hired man, Christopher Columbus. One is fiction superimposed on fact, while the other approaches the reader from the opposite direction. Both stories turn in on themselves, reverse roles and blur the distinctions between fact and fiction.

In East-West we find people in new contexts, away from home, inhabiting places unfamiliar to them. We meet people who impose private, personal structures on a wider experience that others share. Misunderstandings create their own new language, and fiction expresses and interprets a shared reality.

But what is continually astounding about these stories is the literary style that Salman Rushdie brings to almost every sentence. The pictures he draws are surreal, even hyper-real and yet utterly mundane, even prosaic at the same time.

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Title: The Chesapeake: Oyster Buyboats, Ships & Steamed Crabs

Subtitle: Short Stories, Fish Tales & the Country Philosopher

Author: Jack Rue, Capt. Joseph C. Lore, Stephen Gore Uhler, Mark Robbins, Vi Englund, Fred McCoy, Lenny Rudow, Larry Jarboe, Pepper Langley, Ken Rossignol

Narrator: Scott W. Kirby

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-11-16

Publisher: Kenneth C. Rossignol

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

Welcome aboard the third volume of The Chesapeake. This book, The Chesapeake: Oyster Buyboats, Ships & Steamed Crabs, spans the decades of the lives of our writers and the times of the Chesapeake Tidewater region from 1900 to the present time.

A first-person account of Chesapeake Bay bounty being harvested and provided to the national market is related by Capt. Joe Lore of Solomon's Island along with an interview with his father, Capt. J. C. Lore, Sr., from 50 years earlier.

Pepper Langley relished his days of establishing his own business after his high school commencement speaker told him he had a gold mine in his backyard.

The storytelling of Vi Englund is superb as she wrote vivid descriptions of going to sea. Get lost in the middle of roaring Atlantic storms in her ship's galley, and appreciate the majesty of the sea.

Mark Robbins provides entertaining tales of sailing, and Cap'n Larry Jarboe cannot be beat when it comes to knowing where the fish are hanging out and how to get them on your hook.

The Country Philosopher, Stephen Gore Uhler, got an elbow from another philosopher, Amos Arthur Holmes, but Steve wins overall for truthfulness - not a trait he learned from Jack Rue. Between Jack Rue and Fred McCoy, old tales are here for a new generation of tale-learners eager to find digital news of days of old.

Some of the old gold mines of The Solomon's Islander and The Chesapeake have been reopened, and we found Tony Marconi and Lenny Rudow hiding back in the caverns, grinning and eager to share their news and views with the world.

The Bill Burton State Park at Cambridge to the Cape Charles Harbor shown on the cover unite both shores of the Chesapeake to bring you, the listener, who may or may not dabble in U-boat fantasies and time warps, a complete view of the Tidewater region.

Members Reviews:

THE OLD SALTS KEEP THE THREAD OF WATERMEN ON THE CHESAPEAKE ALIVE

A great compilation of short stores from some of the last of the legendary "Old Salts" who were youngsters and young men at the tail end of the heyday of sail and working boats on the Chesapeake Bay. They tell of the Bugeyes and Skipjacks, wooden working boats that were driven by sails, though a few later had auxiliary motors. Few are still used today sadly. The system where "Buy" boats travelled from fishing, crabbing/oyster boats (in season of course) buying their catches then speeding to restaurants and even up to DC with their catches to sell for the rich and powerful to dine on in luxury, or the common man at a "crab house"! The little know Oyster Wars and Crab Wars along with illegal catches is regaled to the reader. Often shot from shot guns or slugs and bullets flew close by, with the occasional "bad" aim striking someone, even occasionally killing an unfortunate! Game and Fish Officers along with Natural Resources Police and even the County Sheriff's putting out onto the water to enforce the laws, repel "poachers"/invaders from "another State" from Maryland waters.

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Title: The Chesapeake: Oyster Buyboats, Ships & Steamed Crabs

Subtitle: Short Stories, Fish Tales & the Country Philosopher

Author: Jack Rue, Capt. Joseph C. Lore, Stephen Gore Uhler, Mark Robbins, Vi Englund, Fred McCoy, Lenny Rudow, Larry Jarboe, Pepper Langley, Ken Rossignol

Narrator: Scott W. Kirby

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-11-16

Publisher: Kenneth C. Rossignol

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

Welcome aboard the third volume of The Chesapeake. This book, The Chesapeake: Oyster Buyboats, Ships & Steamed Crabs, spans the decades of the lives of our writers and the times of the Chesapeake Tidewater region from 1900 to the present time.

A first-person account of Chesapeake Bay bounty being harvested and provided to the national market is related by Capt. Joe Lore of Solomon's Island along with an interview with his father, Capt. J. C. Lore, Sr., from 50 years earlier.

Pepper Langley relished his days of establishing his own business after his high school commencement speaker told him he had a gold mine in his backyard.

The storytelling of Vi Englund is superb as she wrote vivid descriptions of going to sea. Get lost in the middle of roaring Atlantic storms in her ship's galley, and appreciate the majesty of the sea.

Mark Robbins provides entertaining tales of sailing, and Cap'n Larry Jarboe cannot be beat when it comes to knowing where the fish are hanging out and how to get them on your hook.

The Country Philosopher, Stephen Gore Uhler, got an elbow from another philosopher, Amos Arthur Holmes, but Steve wins overall for truthfulness - not a trait he learned from Jack Rue. Between Jack Rue and Fred McCoy, old tales are here for a new generation of tale-learners eager to find digital news of days of old.

Some of the old gold mines of The Solomon's Islander and The Chesapeake have been reopened, and we found Tony Marconi and Lenny Rudow hiding back in the caverns, grinning and eager to share their news and views with the world.

The Bill Burton State Park at Cambridge to the Cape Charles Harbor shown on the cover unite both shores of the Chesapeake to bring you, the listener, who may or may not dabble in U-boat fantasies and time warps, a complete view of the Tidewater region.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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Title: She

Subtitle: An Extremely Twisted Short Story

Author: Matt Shaw

Narrator: Julian Seager

Format: Unabridged

Length: 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-02-16

Publisher: Matt Shaw Publications

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

From Matt Shaw (Sick B*stards) comes a new short story following a working girl as she tries getting her life back on track after one session goes very, very wrong.

Violent, tragic, sad, and sweet. This one has everything.

Members Reviews:

What a surprising gift!

This story is amazing! Saying more would ruin the fun. Matt's a wicked genius.

Short butbenjoyable yarn

A short story, which while not particularly twisted as the title suggests, but actually I found it to be a decent piece of drama. It ended a bit abruptly, as many short stories do, I felt it could have developed a bit more. That said, I did enjoy it, and it was well read by the narrator.

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Title: The Funeral

Subtitle: An Extremely Twisted Short Story

Author: Matt Shaw

Narrator: Julian Seager

Format: Unabridged

Length: 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-02-16

Publisher: Matt Shaw Publications

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

From Matt Shaw (Sick B*stards) comes a new short story dealing with grief, loss, and redemption. A short story filled with twists and turns, ready to make you feel a wide range of emotion.

Members Reviews:

good not bad I liked it.

it was pretty good I liked it but it could have been better. I never ate it was good.

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Title: Where the Evidence Lies

Author: Jeffery Deaver

Narrator: Allan Robertson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 57 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-19-16

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 51 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

From the New York Times best-selling author of the Lincoln Rhyme series, a short story about Lincoln Rhyme solving a mysterious plane crash with no forensic evidence.

A small jet with only one pilot onboard crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. Local authorities are unsure whether the cause of the crash is a bomb or a violent storm. The case seems like it will be an easy one to solve for former NYPD homicide detective Lincoln Rhyme to solve. The evidence is inside the cockpit, but there is one problem. The wreckage sits at the bottom of the Puerto Rican Trench, the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, that stretches to 28,000 feet. The plane can't be raised. And there's no way to get to where the evidence lies.

"Where the Evidence Lies" by Jeffery Deaver is one of 20 short stories within Mulholland Books' Strand Originals series, featuring thrilling stories by the biggest names in mystery from the Strand Magazine archives. View the full series list at mulhollandbooks.com and listen to them all!

Members Reviews:

Meh

It's too short to really develop anything. You don't care about the poor schmuck who died. You don't care about the other people in the story. You don't even really care about Sachs or Rhyme; if you didn't already know them, you wouldn't be interested in getting to know them further.

Everything has to be explained in the last paragraph. That doesn't work even in a short story. No idea how they zeroed in on the suspect. The only interesting thing is that this is about witnesses and not evidence, so it could have been a fascinating twist for Rhyme who doesn't trust witnesses and only trusts the evidence!

The narration is mediocre.