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: Men Without Women

Author: Haruki Murakami

Narrator: Bruno Roubicek

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-09-17

Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.

Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.

Critic Reviews:

"Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility." (Guardian on Norwegian Wood)

"Brilliantly combines elements of the surreal, film noir and existentialist enquiry." (Sunday Times on Dance, Dance, Dance)

Members Reviews:

Modern day Hemingway

Taking the title from the original Ernest Hemingway novel, Haruki Murakami has updated it for a modern audience in different parts of the world, primarily Japan.

It is a series of portraits of men who have chosen the path of loneliness away from women and the void that it creates when running away from intimacy. Beautiful, simplistic with a wonderful flow, Murakami has a spectacular way of building characters and their anecdotal narratives.

Well written stories with no point to them.

Having read almost all of Murakami`s work, I always find him to be so hit and miss. He is without doubt, a talented writer in terms of his descriptions, although he tends to overuse metaphor a little. What I always find annoying and short-changed by however, is the way I almost feel cheated when I come to the end of one of his stories. It`s as though he lays down all these story lines, characters, bits of tantalising information and mystery, and then just throws them in the air at the end and lets you watch as they merely flutter to the ground. My main complaint is that the stories have a beginning, middle, but no end, and you are left thinking, `what was the point of that?` In a word, cheated.

Absorbing

Im a big fan of Murakami and thought this collection of stories was really enjoyable. I listened to it walking to work and found myself completely absorbed, unwilling to turn it off. As Ive said in previous reviews of his work, there is something I really love about Hurakamis writing. I find it absorbing, almost hypnotic. I found myself drawn deep into every story. I liked that I had no expectations for the story, they all took me by surprise and ended somewhere I never expected, full of odd turns. My favourite story was Sansa In Love. This is such a funny, weird and brilliant story, it stopped me in my tracks and I couldnt stop laughing. Pure genius. I have to say the title story is the weakest in the collection. I loved the premise but found it rambled a lot and didnt work. Men Without Men is very good and Id recommend it.

Murakami deserves better

I have loved some recent books and this narration by Bruno Roubicek throws into relief the importance, the vital importance, of a good narrator. The writing had a deadened, flat quality and Murakami is never dead or flat. I really didn't like this (as you might have gathered, lol).

Very disappointed

Expected better twisted stories from Murakami, this book was very boring barely managed to listen till the end

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: In Watermelon Sugar

Author: Richard Brautigan

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-25-17

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

iDEATH is a place where the sun shines a different color every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. In this book, Richard Brautigan discovers and expresses the mood of the counterculture generation.

Members Reviews:

wished I'd kept it so glad to see I could purchase it again

Had this book years and years ago, wished I'd kept it so glad to see I could purchase it again. Different cover from the original edition but contents are the same

Five Stars

Great price, new book- shrink-wrapped..

Five Stars

Great book!

Good book, Kindle formatting doesn't hinder the reading

The book is interesting, however strange it may seem. Glimpses and thoughts ramble through the book, a few pages and simple stories create the sketch of what a normal book would include but that's why this works. It's the pieces not directly related but still connecting that can pull you along through the book.

Five Stars

There is trout fishing but that may not be the point

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: Spoils

Author: Brian Van Reet

Narrator: Nicol Zanzarella, Armando Duran, Andrew Eiden

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-18-17

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The Kite Runner meets The Things They Carried in this explosive debut that maps the blurred lines between good and bad, soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished.

It is April 2003. American forces have taken Baghdad and are now charged with winning hearts and minds. But this vital tipping point is barely recognized for what it is, as a series of miscalculations and blunders fuels an already-simmering insurgency intent on making Iraq the next graveyard of empires.

In dazzling and propulsive prose, Brian Van Reet explores the lives on both sides of the battle lines: Cassandra, a 19-year-old gunner on an American Humvee who is captured during a deadly firefight and awakens in a prison cell; Abu Al-Hool, a lifelong mujahedeen beset by a simmering crisis of conscience as he struggles against enemies from without and within, including the new wave of far more radicalized jihadists; and Specialist Sleed, a tank crewman who goes along with a "victimless" crime, the consequences of which are more awful than any he could have imagined.

Depicting a war spinning rapidly out of control, destined to become a modern classic, Spoils is an unsparing and morally complex novel that chronicles the achingly human cost of combat.

Critic Reviews:

"Brian Van Reet's beautiful, intense, and at times disturbing novel Spoils traces the motivations and desires of combatants on both sides of the Iraq War, showing us what happens when increasing violence and chaos start to warp the choices they're able to make." (Phil Klay, author of Redeployment)

"Van Reet's lean prose accommodates a laconic style suggesting military reports and detail-rich context fed by a keen eye and memory. He embeds the reader with the unwashed troops in a cramped Humvee, in a dark cell where only screams penetrate, and in the mind of a Muslim fighters with two decades of campaigning, a dead son, lost wife, scant wins, and more doubts than faith can ease. A fine piece of writing that should stand in the front ranks of recent war novels." (Kirkus)

"In his debut novel, Brian Van Reet sets his characters on a collision course amidst the chaos of the early stages of the Iraq War...As the story unfolds, flesh and convictions are pitted against each other, drawing blood with every inch surrendered.... At its core, Spoils is a narrative of intertwining struggles, with each character bound and trapped by the Iraq War in one way or another. The storytelling is both intense and surreal.... In time, Van Reet's Spoils may become a classic of the Iraq War." (Foreign Policy)

Members Reviews:

Like a punch in the gut

Like a punch in the gut. The prose is stripped down, the settings forlorn, and the disconnect between the politics and reality of war is evident from the start. Our protagonists are placed guarding a cross roads when all hell breaks lose- and the consequences just take you down into the muck--no one is a winner here-- the Iraqis, the foreign fighters (who themselves split between the more traditional and radical elements), or the U.S. soldiers. I doubt this is any different than any past war. But the settings and characters are well drawn and the prose is clear and powerful.

I just loved this book

I just loved this book. As a reader, you leave a piece of your heart with each 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: My Cat Yugoslavia

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Pajtim Statovci

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini, Alison Fraser

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-18-17

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A love story set in two countries in two radically different moments in time, bringing together a young man, his mother, a boa constrictor, and one capricious cat.

In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl is married off to a man she hardly knows, but what was meant to be a happy match goes quickly wrong. Soon thereafter her country is torn apart by war, and she and her family flee. Years later her son, Bekim, grows up a social outcast in present-day Finland, not just an immigrant in a country suspicious of foreigners but a gay man in an unaccepting society. Aside from casual hookups, his only friend is a boa constrictor whom, improbably - he is terrified of snakes - he lets roam his apartment. Then, during a visit to a gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat who moves in with him and his snake. It is this witty, charming, manipulative creature who starts Bekim on a journey back to Kosovo to confront his demons and make sense of the magical, cruel, incredible history of his family. And it is this that, in turn, enables him finally to open himself to true love - which he will find in the most unexpected place.

Critic Reviews:

"[Statovci] knows how to disorient - and disarm.... This dark debut has a daring, irrepressible spirit." (The Atlantic)

"Powerful.... Dramatic.... Statovci is a tremendous talent. This debut novel - a deserved winner of the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for Best First Novel in 2014 - has an intensity and power that demands a second reading." (Library Journal )

"An elegant, allegorical portrait of lives lived at the margin...A fine debut, layered with meaning and shades of sorrow." (Kirkus Reviews)

Members Reviews:

Weirdly Imaginative

So this guy meets a talking cat in a bar and takes him homewhere the cat doesnt get along with the guys pet boa constrictor.

My Cat Yugoslavia was quite a book. Its a family drama, a refugee tale, but also a fable. How is the cat like Yugoslavia? The guyBekimis drawn to the cat despite the cats sarcasm, cruelty and sometimes violence. Is that how he thinks Yugoslavia treated him? Its how his father sometimes treated him. But thats another story.

Half the novel is the history of Bekims parents. His mother follows Kosovan/Albanian tradition in marrying a virtual stranger, then becoming a dutiful wife and mother. The family flees Kosovo for Finland (the flight episode was a highlight) to escape the Serbian war of the 1990s, and thats where Bekim grows up.

The narrators, Edoardo Ballerini and Alison Fraser, were both excellent. Alison Frasers soft Kosovan accent and almost shy voice was just right. Overall, an intriguing listen.

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: Based on a True Story

Author: Delphine de Vigan

Narrator: Katy Sobey

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-06-17

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 26 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Today I know that L. is the sole reason for my powerlessness. And that the two years that we were friends almost made me stop writing forever.

Overwhelmed by the huge success of her latest novel, exhausted and unable to begin writing her next book, Delphine meets L.

L. is the kind of impeccable, sophisticated woman who fascinates Delphine - a woman with smooth hair and perfectly filed nails and a gift for saying the right thing. Delphine finds herself irresistibly drawn to her, their friendship growing as their meetings, notes and texts increase. But L. begins to dress like Delphine, and, in the face of Delphine's crippling inability to write, L. even offers to answer her emails, and their relationship rapidly intensifies. L. becomes more and more involved in Delphine's life until she patiently takes control and turns it upside down: slowly, surely, insidiously.

Based on a True Story is a chilling novel of suspense that will leave you questioning the truth and its significance long after the final minute.

Members Reviews:

Kept listening...hoping t would improve

I am at 1 hour and 46 min left to finish. Just can't do it.

Terribly boring, no action, just a lot of information about what the writer is thinking. The point of view seems to be held by a stupid woman.

REVIEW

THE NARRATOR IS RATHER TOO SELF-ABSORBED AND FRANKLY A BIT OF A BORE BUT THE CONJECTURE WHETHER L IS A FIGMENT OF HER PARANOIA OR A TRULY MALEVOLENT FRIEND REMAINS TO THE END MAKING FOR AN INTRIGUING READ .

DR

A clever psychological thriller

How many books do you trust to be actually based on reality and are non fiction books completely factual? These are some of the questions that arise in this descriptive, slick psychological thriller. It follows the journey of a novelist with writer's block who seems to have been befriended by a woman who takes a lot of interest in her. The woman is enigmatic and secretive and who knows how much of her is real. It is written in the perspective of the writer and so it shows in detail how her mind unravels and is manipulated.

It leaves you pondering whether the protagonist actually imagined the entire thing?

Slower burner but stick with it

Slow to start but stick with it really gets going. Sticks in your head probably because of the unanswered questions but that is not a bad thing.

Gripping persevere.

A stupendous feat will you in different psychological states;

questioning, hope, anger, fear, relief, doubt.

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 Gargoyle Hunters

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: John Freeman Gill

Narrator: John Freeman Gill

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-21-17

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 23 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Hilarious and poignant, The Gargoyle Hunters is a love letter to a vanishing city, and a deeply emotional story of fathers and sons. Intimately portraying New York's elbow-jostling relationship with time, the novel solves the mystery of a brazen and seemingly impossible architectural heist - the theft of an entire historic Manhattan building - that stunned the city and made the front page of the New York Times in 1974.

With both his family and his city fracturing, 13-year-old Griffin Watts is recruited into his estranged father's illicit and dangerous architectural salvage business. Small and nimble, Griffin is charged with stealing exuberantly expressive 19th-century architectural sculptures - gargoyles - right off the faces of unsung tenements and iconic skyscrapers all over town. As his father explains it, these gargoyles, carved and cast by immigrant artisans during the city's architectural glory days, are an endangered species in this era of sweeping urban renewal.

Desperate both to connect with his father and to raise cash to pay the mortgage on the brownstone where he lives with his mother and sister, Griffin is slow to recognize that his father's deepening obsession with preserving the architectural treasures of Beaux Arts New York is also a destructive force, imperiling Griffin's friendships, his relationship with his very first girlfriend, and even his life.

As his father grows increasingly possessive of both Griffin's mother and his scavenged touchstones of the lost city, Griffin must learn how to build himself into the person he wants to become and discover which parts of his life can be salvaged - and which parts must be let go. Maybe loss, he reflects, is the only thing no one can ever take away from you.

Tender, funny, and achingly sad, The Gargoyle Hunters introduces an extraordinary new novelist.

Critic Reviews:

"In the spirit of Jonathan Lethem and J. D. Salinger, John Freeman Gill strips the mask off New York City in this poignant, incisive, irreverent novel about fatherhood, art, obsession, creation, and destruction. This novel salvages so many things, not least our abiding relationship with the past. This is a wonderful, compelling debut." (Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic)

"The Gargoyle Hunters is wonderful, strong, funny, with yards and yards of beautiful writing. Its pages are full of reading pleasures.... Extraordinary." (Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of The Shipping News and "Brokeback Mountain")

"John Freeman Gill's The Gargoyle Hunters is a brilliant evocation of many things: the world of a 13-year-old boy, with its mixture of thoughtless destructiveness and wrenching emotion; a son's relationship with a charismatic, architecture-loving, thieving father; the endless changes to timeless Manhattan during the crumbling, tumultuous 1970s. Funny, heartbreaking, elegiac, unforgettable - David Mitchell's Black Swan Green meets E. B. White's Here Is New York." (Gretchen Rubin, number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Project)

Members Reviews:

A 1970s Tale Of Woe And Destruction

It's so strange. I just finished the book Greyhound about a 12 year old coming of age on a cross country bus trip.

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: Quicksand

Author: Nella Larsen

Narrator: Christine Glassman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-07-17

Publisher: BN Publishing

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Nella Larsen's first novel tells the story of Helga Crane, a fictional character loosely based on Larsen's own early life. Crane is the lovely and refined daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian black father who abandons Helga and her mother soon after Helga is born. Unable to feel comfortable with any of her white-skinned relatives, Helga lives in various places in America and visits Denmark in search of people among whom she feels at home. The work is a superb psychological study of a complicated and appealing woman, Helga Crane, who, like Larsen herself, is the product of a liaison between a black man and a white woman. In one sense, Quicksand might be called an odyssey; however, instead of overcoming a series of obstacles and finally arriving at her native land, Larsen's protagonist has a series of adventures, each of which ends in disappointment.

Members Reviews:

Anticlimactic

I waited the entire book for a high point that never came. Disappointing because I like the characters.

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 Barrowfields

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Phillip Lewis

Narrator: MacLeod Andrews

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-07-17

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 14 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A richly textured coming-of-age story about fathers and sons, home and family, recalling classics by Thomas Wolfe and William Styron, by a powerful new voice in fiction.

Just before Henry Aster's birth, his father - outsized literary ambition and pregnant wife in tow - reluctantly returns to the small Appalachian town in which he was raised and installs his young family in an immense house of iron and glass perched high on the side of a mountain. There, Henry grows up under the writing desk of this fiercely brilliant man. But when tragedy tips his father toward a fearsome unraveling, what was once a young son's reverence is poisoned, and Henry flees, not to return until years later when he, too, must go home again.

Mythic in its sweep and mesmeric in its prose, The Barrowfields is a breathtaking debut about the darker side of devotion, the limits of forgiveness, and the reparative power of shared pasts.

Critic Reviews:

"Charming, absorbing, and assured.... Lewis evokes his settings beautifully, and his prose is bracingly erudite. This debut has the ability to fully immerse its readers." (Publishers Weekly)

"The Barrowfields is a stunning debut novel rich in character and place, steeped in literature and music, and fraught with family drama.... With clear echoes of Poe and Wolfe, The Barrowfields also gives a nod to Richard Russo by reflecting an appreciation for the eccentricities of regional characters." (Shelf Awareness)

"Rich and complex.... Lewis is a master of creating a sense of place." (Kirkus Reviews)

Members Reviews:

Just Not My Cuppa (not a fan of coming-of-age storres)

My response to The Barrowfields is a mixed one. Initially, I was quite caught up in the story of a family moving to the father's North Carolina home town, purchasing an architecturally unique home on a mountainside that had long been abandoned because a family had died mysteriously in it. While the Asters in some ways seem like an ideal family, there's a sense of something dysfunctional about them. Young Henry adores his father, a lawyer who made it rich on a single case and now spends most of his time writing a novel that never seems to be finished, listening to music, and drinking. His mother is a bit of an enabler; she lives her life around her husband's schedule and fetches more drinks whenever she is asked. Henry's sister Threnody is an odd one; she has few friends and relies on the much older Henry for companionship. It is almost like he is the father figure in her life. We're told at the very beginning of the novel that Henry's father "leaves," but that is never really explained until near the end.

I started to be less enthusiastic about this novel about halfway through, when Henry leaves for college and starts acting like a moony geek over a girl with the ridiculous name of Story. Story is beautiful. Story is smart. Story is perfect. Story is unattainable. Story is also rather disturbed by some family dysfunction of her own. I hated her. I should be honest and say that I'm not a huge fan of the typical coming-of-age story, and that is what this section feels like. I almost gave up on The Barrowfields but stuck with it to the bittersweet end.

A lot of reviewers have mentioned the beautiful language, and I will agree with that to a point. But it is often a bit overwrought for my taste.

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: Tibetan Cross

Author: Mike Bond

Narrator: Scott Merriman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-03-17

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A terrifying international manhunt and stunning love story...

An American climber in the Himalayas stumbles on a shipment of backpack nuclear weapons headed into Tibet for use against China. Pursued by spy agencies and other killers across Asia, North Africa, Europe and the United States, he is captured then rescued by a beautiful young woman with whom he forms a deadly liaison. They escape, are captured and escape again, death always at their heels. A terrifying international manhunt and stunning love story, Tibetan Cross is a European best seller.

Members Reviews:

Waste of time

There are so many other good books I could have listened to. I still don't know what the point of the story is. Do yourself a favor and listen to a good book. The narrator did a good job but the storyline fails.

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 Crying Place

Author: Lia Hills

Narrator: Mark Coles Smith

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-01-17

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

After years of travelling, Saul is trying to settle down. But one night he receives the devastating news of the death of his oldest friend, Jed, recently returned from working in a remote Aboriginal community.

Saul's discovery in Jed's belongings of a photo of a woman convinces him that she may hold the answers to Jed's fate. So he heads out on a journey into the heart of the Australian desert to find the truth, setting in motion a powerful story about the landscapes that shape us and the ghosts that lay their claim.

The Crying Place is a haunting, luminous novel about love, country, and the varied ways in which we grieve. In its unflinching portrayal of the borderlands where worlds come together and the past and present overlap, it speaks of the places and moments that bind us. The myths that draw us in. And, ultimately, the ways in which we find our way home.

Critic Reviews:

"A brave and devastating novel of grief, place and belonging. I was swept up in her voice and by her storytelling skills right from the opening pages and I wasn't released back into the world until I reached the end. Even then, the novel doesn't let you go. Its grace, its compassion and its deep humanity make you see our country anew." (Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap)

Members Reviews:

A journey to the heart of reconciliation

An interesting psycho-geographic story of a man pursuing answers to his best friends death. This journey is circuitous (and sometimes long-winded) taking us to the heart of memory and reconciling the past - colonisation, the erasure of first nation history and the painful inadequacy for our first people of living two-ways, the dispossession, the fragmentation the griefs and losses. This is a vivid depiction of some of the character and characters of the desert, an Aboriginal outstation and its people and the remaining culture. While it could use an edit (some prose is a little florid for me) this is an original story seeking to reconcile the past.

Intriguing but not engaging

Intrigued by the plot but did not keep me captivated. Found it a bit difficult to commit to.