Download Best Sellers Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Choke

Author: Sofie Laguna

Narrator: Danielle Baynes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-05-17

Publisher: Wavesound Audio

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Abandoned by her mother as a toddler, only occasionally visited by her volatile father and raised solely by her tormented Pop, Justine finds sanctuary in The Choke, a place where the banks of the Murray River are so narrow they can almost touch.

Although Justine doesn't know it, her father is a menacing criminal, and the world she is exposed to is one of great peril to her. She must make sense of it on her own - and when she eventually does, she knows what she has to do....

Members Reviews:

Loved it.

Really moving story about how vulnerable children can be. Great characters and story. This book made me think a lot. Also loved listening to Sofie Laguna's book The Eye of the Sheep on Audible.

Absolutely loved this!

This book reminded me of Melina Marchetta's early work. Loved all of the Australian references.

Sad story

The Eye of the Sheep is one of my favourite stories so I bought this book.

This is a very sad story and the writing style makes it very realistic.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Returning Tide

Author: Liz Fenwick

Narrator: Anne Dover

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-23-17

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Two sisters and one betrayal that will carry across generations...

In wartime Cornwall, 1943, a story between two sisters begins - the story of Adele and Amelia and the heartbreaking betrayal that will divide them forever. Decades later the efforts of one reckless act still echo - but how long will it be until their past returns?

The Returning Tide will sweep you away to the beautiful Cornish coast, full of secrets and mystery, and will be loved by fans of Kate Morton and Rachel Hore.

Members Reviews:

The returning tide

I enjoyed this book as it covered the past and the present so well in the story line. All through the story I had a thought that there was a twist on the story to come I wasn't that surprised but it made a good ending. Well worth listening to

Predictable

Sadly very predictable, quite pleasant but not something that kept me hanging on. Also got very frustrated by the narrators inability to pronounce Mawnan Smith correctly. Why don't they check these things first?!

Predictable

I enjoyed this as a gentle yarn, but it lacked depth. I found I was stopping at time changes to remember who was who. The characters never built enough depth to know or relate to them but despite that I enjoyed it on a superficial level. It made nice light listening

Wonderful

I really enjoyed listening to The Returning Tide by Liz Fenwick . It was a lovely story and brilliantly read by Anne Dover as usual. The way the two different years were linked was so good and was quite sad in places. How I remember staying in the exact area of Falmouth the story was written about - it brought back so many memories - thank you!

Fantastic read

Really enjoyed this book and it's intriguing story line. Sad but sweet story with plenty of character!

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Gamble

Author: LaVyrle Spencer

Narrator: Constance Towers

Format: Abridged

Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-19-09

Publisher: Phoenix Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 31 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Agatha was the picture of primness and propriety, although her green eyes could blaze with anger or sparkle with humor. Scott was the picture of lazy charm and happy indifference to what others thought was right and wrong. They were enemies, then friends. Then the sweet innocence of a child opened their eyes and their hearts. And in each other's arms they were reborn by the soft, wondrous gift of love.

©1994 LaVyrle Spencer; (P)2009 Phoenix

Members Reviews:

Better as read vs Audible

Read it too quickly. This is a book I've enjoyed for years and tried it as Audible, kinda disappointed

Lovely story

An old favorite, this version is abridged but not gutted - enjoyed it very much.

wonderful

I enjoyed the audio version of this book!

I could have done without the last few seconds but the rest was a wonderful tale! Why does it take some men so long to realize they're in love and to do something about it?

Two unlikely neighbors start out as enemies! Can they become friends, or even more? Set in the time of the Prohibition!!

The gamble

I would rather have the unabridged in this format. This is one of my favorite books but you have cut out the best details. I was very disappointed.

Sweet Book

LaVyrle Spencers books are not great works. They are romance novels and as such this is a good book. I read most of her books as a younger woman. I wanted something light and short and this filled the bill. The characters were believable but I did wish that the out of town temperance leader had been better developed. Constance Towers is the perfect reader. She made the characters come alive.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Thalia Book Club: The Lover

Author: Marguerite Duras

Narrator: Catherine Lacey, Akhil Sharma, Francoise Mouly, Kate Zambreno, Kathleen Chalfant

Format: Original Recording

Length: 1 hr and 21 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-28-15

Publisher: Symphony Space

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Catherine Lacey (Nobody Is Ever Missing), Akhil Sharma (Family Life), Francoise Mouly (art editor at The New Yorker), and Kate Zambreno (Heroines, Green Girl) discuss the acclaimed novel in celebration of its 30th anniversary. Marguerite Duras' (Hiroshima Mon Amour) haunting, luminous book tells of the tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover in prewar Indochina. With a reading by Kathleen Chalfant (The Affair, Angels in America on Broadway).

Members Reviews:

Lack of book

The views and background of the various speakers about the book was interesting, but I wanted to listen to the book itself.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Spectator Bird

Author: Wallace Stegner

Narrator: Edward Herrmann

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-18-09

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 220 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "killing time before time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. But a postcard from a friend causes him to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before. The memories of that trip to his mother's birthplace move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.

©1976 Wallace Stegner (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic Reviews:

"Elegant and entertaining. . . .Every scene is adroitly staged and each effect precisely accomplished." (

The Atlantic)

Members Reviews:

Fabulous

This novel is all insight and irony. The writing is glorious. Listening to the superb reading of it by Edward Hermann it took my breath away.

I wonder if without that superb voice, I would have gotten it. It's amazing to me after a lifetime of reading books, to think that I might have missed a great deal by not having them read to me. A reader of intelligence and eloquence, brings to a great book much of what an actor such as Lawrence Olivier brings to Henry the Fifth.

As I write this I am nearly finished with it and will, as I often do with a book I love, start it again from the beginning before I do. This way I not only put off parting ways with it but get to savor it with a double appreciation, so to speak.

I wish I had the capacity to find the words to review it properly. Just have a listen.

Maybe it's a case of timing...

I hate to say this because I have loved every Stegner I've read so far. But Joe Allson's tedious self-absorption grated on me after a while; don't see how his wife put up with it. The excellent narration only emphasized the petulant whining of the protagonist. I'm of an age where reflections, whether sweet, bitter, regretful, angry or content, are to be expected of me, and I comply. But while I may be approaching the end with some trepidation, and spend way too much time contemplating life and not always positively, I refuse to allow myself to be an Allston. Perhaps it's because unlike Joe, I still have work which I will inhabit until I drop; it keeps me joyfully and necessarily occupied. I may finish the book one of these days; right now it just irritates me.

outstanding narration

The narration was great; book was very engrossing, but denouement a bit disappointing for me.

Preoccupied With Death...but Well Written

Well written, but not much excitement or happiness. Descriptions are very well done. Tone is modest and pleasant. I will read everything he has written because he is a very good story teller. Though the telling of the story is very good, the topic is a bit dour. Cheers, Ken

Perfect Match of Author and Reader

If you could sum up The Spectator Bird in three words, what would they be?

The Spectator Bird, one of the funniest saddest books you'll ever hear, finds the perfect reader in Edward Herrmann. All readers should aspire to the standard he sets.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Lights Out in Wonderland

Author: D B C Pierre

Narrator: William Rycroft

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-08-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Man Booker Prize recipient DBC Pierre won effusive praise for his debut novel Vernon God Little. His second novel, Lights Out in Wonderland fulfills the promise of his first with a tale of 21st-century disaffection.

Caught up in his decadent lifestyle, 20-something Gabriel Brockwell decides to kill himself. But before he does, he embarks on a quest for Wonderlanda bacchanal to end all bacchanals. His journey takes him around the globe, from London to Tokyo to Berlin, to taste all of lifes wildest pleasures, only to emerge with a renewed spirit and a desire to make up for some of the terrible things hes done.

Members Reviews:

Anticlimactic, not in the same league as Vernon God Little

I thought the initial chapters weren't engaging and dull. It took me months to get past the first 20 pages because I kept getting distracted by other books.

The characters are not developed and the writing isn't as succinct as VGL. The farcical plot line is just that, farcical - you don't really believe a word of it, which is a shame because Pierre had me believing the whole way through VGL.

I also take offense to the almost self congratulatory aspects of the protagonists drug addiction. I know that Pierre suffered in the past, but to then romanticize it in the actions of the protagonist is quite frankly, boring.

A real shame of a book, because Vernon God Little is definitely in my top 10 books of all time. Hopefully Pierre gets it right again next time around.

Nearly a masterpiece

With the exception of what seems like a hastily-written section two thirds of the way through, Lights Out In Wonderland (LOW) is a superb book. It is not only a white-water read in the traditional DBC Pierre style, but some passages are so lyrical, and so taut, that they stand out as among the best I've ever read.

Enlightened

This book was given to a great friend who especially wanted it and could not find a copy where she lives. ("In Bulgaria) It may not be my favorite read but it delighted her and that is all that mattered.

my favorite book in a few years

my favorite book in a few years

Dirty But Clean indeed!!

DBC PIERRE is one of my favourite writers and why not? I wish there were many more of his books available. His subtle humour and distinct characterisation leads his narrative, a story everyone can relate to. Please write some more!!

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Wapshot Chronicle

Author: John Cheever

Narrator: Joe Barrett

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-11-09

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 60 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

When The Wapshot Chronicle was published in 1957, John Cheever was already recognized as a writer of superb short stories. But The Wapshot Chronicle, which won the 1958 National Book Award, established him as a major novelist.

Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.

Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, The Wapshot Chronicle is a family narrative in the tradition of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James.

As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of John Cheever's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview where James Atlas interviews Blake Bailey about the life and work of John Cheever begins as soon as the audiobook ends.

Critic Reviews:

"The best introduction to Cheever's work.... Richly inventive and vividly told." (The New York Times Book Review)

"[John Cheever is] a master American storyteller." (Time)

Members Reviews:

Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel

"Man is not simple. Hobgoblin company of love always with us."

The Wapshot Chronicle is a twin Bildungsroman of sons Moses and Coverly, framed by the letters, journaling, and loneliness of their father Leander. It is a crazy beautiful 20th Century Great Expectations-like novel of a family's depth and breadth, its secrets and its flaws. The two brothers are saddled with the albatross and obligation to insure ensure that Old Honoras keeps paying the bills (future) for the boys and (current) for their parents.

Cheever fills his novel with dominating mothers, idiosyncratic and co-dependent guardians, changeable wives and costly lovers. The trinity of Wapshot men, float throughout Cheever's novel in a wayward, rudderless boat. Their lives are constantly taking on water and they seem destined to be blown further from the shore by the dominant humor of the nearest strong-willed female.

The characters in The Wapshot Chronicle were amazing. Its language and narrative were incredible. Cheever's satire and ribald humor constantly bit this reader in his lusty-for-good-literature ass.

Long Meandering Tale

Though the author has a gift with words and listening to the Wapshot Chronicle has its times of funny or poignant interest, overall it seemed to go nowhere. I listened to the end, waiting for some conclusion, something to tie the thing together, but its not there. Instead it is a tale about an eccentric, all-over-the place family, that in the end is sad to me. I don't know about you, but who wants to hear, over and over about three men who meander through life and never really resolve anything?

Slapdash Chronicle

I struggled with a busy schedule to find the time to read...

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Firefly Dance

Subtitle: Four Novellas About Growing Wise and Growing Up

Author: Sarah Addison Allen, Kathryn Magendie, Phyllis Schieber

Narrator: Frances Fuller

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-30-12

Publisher: Belle Books, Inc.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 30 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Bright lights flicker in the dark evenings of summer. Pinpoints of hope float against the black descent of night. The sweetest of small and innocent creatures finds its way through the shadows. Fireflies seem to dance on sheer air, illuminating the space between heartbeats.

Children give off a similar brave glow, despite the challenges of their young lives. The lessons of childhood are often painful, the shedding of fragile wings in the gloam of an uncertain future. These rich novellas are small jewels reflecting the essence of what it means to grow up dancing among the shadows of life, carrying a brave, small beacon because you know that even the brightest days always, always, end in darkness.

Childhood can be so sweetly sad and sadly sweet, profound and deceptively easy to categorize, yet poignant to remember.

New York Times best-selling novelist Sarah Addison Allen (Garden Spells, Sugar Queen, The Peach Keeper) anchors The Firefly Dance with her wistful and funny novella about Louise, a North Carolina girl whose keen observations of the lives around her weaves an unforgettable spell with just a hint of everyday magic.

Kathryn Magendie's Petey deals wryly with her family's move from the cool blue mountains of North Carolina to the hot flatlands of Texas.

Augusta Trobaugh's stoic Georgia girl leads us through her surreal encounter with a mysterious backwoods toddler who turns out to be anything but ordinary.

Members Reviews:

Firefly Dance has a wonderful variety

If you could sum up The Firefly Dance in three words, what would they be?

The variety is impressive and the delivery is excellent. I'm from the south, and I often cringe when I hear people trying to do southern accents. Sometimes, the narrator was absolutely channeling my well-educated southern mother and sometimes, she sounded like someone out of Deliverance. Not many people can do that. I also really enjoyed the dark almost Gothic quality of the story. I recommend this highly!

If youve listened to books by the authors before, how does this one compare?

For anything set in the south, this is the best I have heard, in terms of the accents. Other than the accents in the delivery, I think the variety in Firefly Dance makes it more interesting to listen to.

What does Frances Fuller bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

A lot of emotion. I really felt that she 'got' the characters. I enjoy listening to her.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Both!!

Any additional comments?

I'd love to here more things read by Frances.

Nice!

Which character as performed by Frances Fuller was your favorite?

Petey was my favorite character and I think the narrator connected to her as well. These stories are presented as "growing up" tales but the themes are universal and already grown up. I really enjoyed the stories and the narration.

Fake Southern Accent Alert!

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I know these were short stories, but every single one of them ended very abruptly and without any kind of closure. They kind of seemed pointless.

Would you be willing to try another one of Frances Fullers performances?

No way. Her fake Southern accent was TERRIBLE. She was trying too hard.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Names

Author: Don DeLillo

Narrator: Jacques Roy

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-16-17

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Set against the backdrop of a lush and exotic Greece, The Names is considered the book that began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Among the cast of DeLillo's bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator's estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neurotic narrator obsessed with his own neuroses. A thriller, a mystery, and still a moving examination of family, loss, and the amorphous and magical potential of language itself, The Names stands with any of DeLillo's more recent and highly acclaimed works.

Critic Reviews:

"The Names not only accurately reflects a portion of our contemporary world but, more importantly, creates an original world of its own." (Chicago Sun-Times)

"DeLillo sifts experience through simultaneous grids of science and poetry, analysis and clear sight, to make a high-wire prose that is voluptuously stark." (Village Voice Literary Supplement)

"DeLillo verbally examines every state of consciousness from eroticism to tourism, from the idea of America as conceived by the rest of the world to the idea of the rest of the world as conceived by America, from mysticism to fanaticism." (New York Times)

Members Reviews:

Nightmare of real things, the fallen wonder...

I move past the scaffolding and walk down the steps, hearing one language after another, rich, harsh, mysterious, strong. This is what we bring to the temple, not prayer or chant or slaughtered rams. Our offering is language.

Don DeLillo, The Names

For 4/5 of this book Don DeLillo was surfing in Mao II, White Noise, Underworld, and Libra territory. I was jamming. Words. Names. Cults. Terrorism. It was fantastic. But there was 1/5 (yup, math works) of this book right before the last few pages where DeLillo just let go of the narrative kite. It was like I was meditating and almost ready to escape the wheel with this book Don, and at the very end your chanting just put me to sleep. Still, 4/5 of this book rocked. And maybe it was me and not you Don. Maybe. I'll review tomorrow some more. Maybe I'll even re-read the last 60+ pages. See if I can detect God or meaning in those words. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm not thinking right. Tomorrow, I'll look at this again with fresh eyes.

[Post Rest] I'm still not ready to make it five stars. It doesn't quite belong to the same orbit as those DeLillo novels listed above. HOWEVER, there was something visceral about this novel that grabbed me (and yes lost me for a bit). I remember going to high school in Turkey in the late 80s. Hell, Kurdish Marxist terrorists inadvertently saved my life (long, but true story). DeLillo's novel is an archeology or words, a history of terror, a hunt for God and the economics of understanding. It is at times a frustrating prose poem and at times glorious burp in a cave. It gives serious echoes of MAO II. It is infinitely quotable. It whirls like a dusty dervish on sacred Name of God. Reducing memory and history to the initials of the Great unknown.

mixed feelings

not an easy read. not sure if it is worth the bother. great narration though

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Bachelors

Author: Muriel Spark

Narrator: Nadia May

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 11-11-08

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 16 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs and shopping at Fortnum's, the cozy bachelors are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented - defrauded, stolen from, blackmailed, or pressed to attend horrid séances - and then plunged, all together, into the nastiest of lawsuits. At the center of that suit hovers pale, blank Patrick Seton, the medium.

Meanwhile, horrors of every size plague the poor bachelors - from epileptic fits to forgeries, spiritualists foaming with protoplasm, and murder - and each horror delights, lit up by Spark's uncanny wit, at once malicious, funny, and deadly serious.

Critic Reviews:

"Completely, searingly original." (

The Independent)"One of the most decisive and unmistakable voices in contemporary fiction....Spark concocts a present-tense deadpan that is at once lyrical, extravagant, and gruesomely funny." (

The New Yorker)"Incomparable reader May's gentle British accent perfectly animates

The Bachelors, a novel of sophisticated wit." (

Booklist)

Members Reviews:

philosophical black comedy

- expressed through description of actions and morality of mostly male singles in late 50s urban British setting. This novel is mostly dialogue and so reads like a play. Even though most of the characters are male, Nadia May seems a fitting narrator for the overall (and often ironic) tone of the book.

Similar to the more contemporary Ian McEwan's "Amsterdam," this is a reflection on responsibility, deception, and self-deception (individual and group). It's far from a light comedy, though there are laughs.

Captivating plot

I felt as though I was living in London in the 1940's. This author should get much more attention than she does Currently.

A perfect reading

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, I'd recommend it to someone who likes stylish funny unsentimental British fiction. The meticulously rendered seedy London mid-twentieth century setting and the many diverse characters make it a joy to listen to.

What did you like best about this story?

The characters, and the way they were portrayed by the narrator. Some are sympathetic, most are funny, at least one is really quite awful!

Have you listened to any of Nadia Mays other performances before? How does this one compare?

I've listened to several others. They're always good, including this one.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, it was hard to put it aside.

Any additional comments?

Highly recommended!