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 Infatuations

Author: Javier Marías, Margaret Jull Costa (translator)

Narrator: Justine Eyre

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-13-13

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 69 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

From the award-winning Spanish writer Javier Marías comes an extraordinary new book that has been a literary sensation around the world: an immersive, provocative novel propelled by a seemingly random murder that we come to understand - or do we? - through one womans ever-unfurling imagination and infatuations.

At the Madrid café where she stops for breakfast each day before work, María Dolz finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Though she can hardly explain it, observing what she imagines to be their "unblemished" life lifts her out of the doldrums of her own existence. But what begins as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement when the man is fatally stabbed in the street. María approaches the widow to offer her condolences, and at the couples home she meets - and falls in love with - another man who sheds disturbing new light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder mystery brilliantly reimagined as metaphysical enquiry, a novel that grapples with questions of love and death, guilt and obsession, chance and coincidence, how we are haunted by our losses, and above all, the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told.

Critic Reviews:

Blindingly intelligent, engagingly accessibleit seems theres nothing Marías cant make fiction do. No wonder hes perennially mentioned as a potential Nobel laureate . . . Maríass rare gift is his ability to make intellectual jousting as suspenseful as the chase scenes in a commercial thriller. Hes tremendously stimulating to read; arresting turns of phrase enfold piercing insights. Kirkus Reviews (starred)

A haunting masterpiece . . . The lasting challenge to literature is to achieve a satisfying marriage between high art and the low drives of a simple plot. The Infatuations is just such a novel . . . Marías plays with perception, memory, and guilt like a toreador. With every flourish of his literary cape, the enthralled reader is never allowed to forget that, in the end, the author will make a killing. Just as Macbeth is a thriller thats also a great tragedy, The Infatuations is a murder story thats also a profound story of fatal obsession . . . Great Spanish novels dont come along too often. Don Quixote was first published as long ago as 1620. I wouldnt be surprised if The Infatuations soon acquired an equally devoted following. The Observer

Extraordinary . . . [A] masterly novel . . . The classical themes of love, death, and fate are explored with elegant intelligence by Marías in what is perhaps his best novel so far . . . Marías has defined the ethos of our time. Alberto Manguel, The Guardian

Marías [is] a consummate stylist . . . The cadences of his exquisite sentences are preserved in translator Costas English, the clauses balanced like a loaded scale . . . It is magic, stupendous, and not done for effect. Booklist (starred)

Absorbing and unnerving . . . For all the currents that ripple across its surface, The Infatuations is powered ultimately by the pressure of good old-fashioned suspense . . . A labyrinthine exploration, at once thrilling and melancholy, of the meanings of one mans deathand a vivid testimony to the power of stories, for good or ill, to weave the world into our thoughts and our thoughts into the world. The Sunday Times (London)

Hypnotic . . .

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 Book of Salt

Author: Monique Truong

Narrator: J. Paul Boehmer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-01-13

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 25 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

[He] came to us through an advertisement that I had in desperation put in the newspaper. It began captivatingly for those days: Two American ladies wish... It was these lines in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book that inspired The Book of Salt.

In Paris, 1934, Bính has accompanied his employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, to the train station for their departure to America. His own destination is unclear: will he go with "the Steins", stay in France, or return to his native Vietnam?

Bính has fled his homeland in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the live-in cook at the famous apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus. Before Bínhs decision is revealed, his mesmerizing narrative catapults us back to his youth in French-colonized Vietnam, his years as a galley hand at sea, and his days turning out fragrant repasts for the doyennes of the Lost Generation.

Members Reviews:

I can't stop crying

I loved it. I had to read this book for class now I'm recommending it to all my housemates. Gorgeously written and we preformed.

Gotta listen twice. wow.

was supposed to read it for class, decided to multi task, and couldn't stop. didn't even last me 36hrs.

...wow...

time for round 2!

Trying to follow The Book Of Salt

I finished it because it was the choice for my book club, but I'm sorry I wasted my time and money. I couldn't follow or figure out what was going on. I don't know how it ended. I'm not even interested. Sorry.

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: Middle C

Author: William H. Gass

Narrator: Jeremy Arthur

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-30-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 24 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A literary event - the long-awaited novel, almost two decades in work, by the acclaimed author of The Tunnel ("The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime." - Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times; "An extraordinary achievement." - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post); Omensetters Luck ("The most important work of fiction by an American in this literary generation" - Richard Gilman, The New Republic); Willie Masters Lonesome Wife; and In the Heart of the Heart of the Country ("These stories scrape the nerve and pierce the heart. They also replenish the language." - Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times).

Gass new novel moves from World War II Europe to a small town in postwar Ohio. In a series of variations, Gass gives us a mosaic of a life - futile, comic, anarchic - arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms and tones, and broken pieces with music as both theme and structure, set in the key of middle C.

It begins in Graz, Austria, 1938. Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland. In London with his family for the duration of the war, he disappears under mysterious circumstances. The family is relocated to a small town in Ohio, where Joseph Skizzen grows up, becomes a decent amateur piano player, in part to cope with the abandonment of his father, and creates as well a fantasy self - a professor with a fantasy goal: to establish the Inhumanity Museum...as Skizzen alternately feels wrongly accused (of what?) and is transported by his music. Skizzen is able to accept guilt for crimes against humanity and is protected by a secret self that remains sinless.

Middle C tells the story of this journey, an investigation into the nature of human identity and the ways in which each of us is several selves, and whether any one self is more genuine than another.

William Gass set out to write a novel that breaks traditional rules and denies itself easy solutions, cliff-edge suspense, and conventional surprises...Middle C is that book; a masterpiece by a beloved master.

Members Reviews:

All the world was a stage. But not for all the wor

Another great author I backed into. Don't misinterpret me. I haven't just run backward over/into Gass. I haven't just "discovered" or "uncovered" the author. I've quoted him often. I've admired him and scanned used bookshelves for him. In my collegiate years I presumed to know more about Gass than I had a right to presume. I've carefully kept The Tunnel displayed, peacocking, on my shelf for decades. I've collected Gass essay collections, Gass criticisms, other Gass fictions. But all my Gass has, until today, remained unread, his books unopened, those pages uncut, words undisturbed.

'Middle C' is a funky book. A musical prose that dances around the center. A mediocre family in flight, in disguise from Austria to London to the Middle of Middle America. A narrator that hides and disguises, that plots and twists. He jumps from school to store to library to university. He climbs the American ladder, remaking each rung as he climbs. He creates a fictional life and dreams that mankind must perish but also fears we might just survive.

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: Kingdom Come

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: J. G. Ballard

Narrator: Andy Caploe

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 07-19-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A violent novel filled with insidious twists, Kingdom Come follows the exploits of Richard Pearson, a rebellious, unemployed advertising executive, whose father is gunned down by a deranged mental patient in a vast shopping mall outside Heathrow Airport. When the prime suspect is released without charge, Richards suspicions are aroused.

Investigating the mystery, Richard uncovers at the Metro-Centre mall a neo-fascist world whose charismatic spokesperson is whipping up the masses into a state of unsustainable frenzy. Riots frequently terrorize the complex, immigrant communities are attacked by hooligans, and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies. In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G. Ballard holds up a mirror to suburban mind rot, revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.

Critic Reviews:

"J. G. Ballard is the undisputed laureate of suburban psychosis.... A brilliant novel." (Literary Review)

Members Reviews:

who is making these narrator calls?

So, what was the thinking here, do you suppose? Hmmm, Ballard was English, so let's get a narrator who can do a really REALLY bad British accent? Did the producer think it would what? maybe cute-up this dark novel? it makes the book seem the epitome of what its author was so caustically satirizing. and it utterly wrecks Ballard's final novel, which is a shame.

Great Story, Poor Reader

Classic J.G. Ballard, a chillingly up-to-date look at a possible future. but Ballard would not be pleased by the reader who adopts a foppish, exaggerated Oxbridge accent for the narrator/chief-protagonist. Ballard would not be pleased. With so many excellent British readers available, why was this American chosen for this book?

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 Orchard Keeper

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Narrator: Ed Sala

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-06-13

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 69 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

One of Americas most celebrated novelists, Cormac McCarthy announced his towering presence on the literary stage with his first novel, The Orchard Keeper. Within the pages of this classic work, John Wesley Rattner, his uncle Ather, and bootlegger Marion Sylder find their lives dangerously entwined in pre-World War II Tennessee. There, the mens tragedies and struggles are mirrored by the looming specter of industrialization.

Members Reviews:

Contains the embryo of McCarthy's future greatness

The disadvantage McCarthy has when an obsessive reader finally works back to his first book, is invariably McCarthy will be unfairly graded against his own amazing output. I liked 'Orchard Keeper'. I really did. It was superior in most ways to most writing out there, but it just didn't hold up against other McCarthy. If one considers 'Suttree' and 'Blood Meridian' to be his masterpieces (and thus 5 stars) and 'The Road', 'No Country for Old Men' and 'All the Pretty Horses'/'the Border Trilogy' to be solid pieces of American literature (all 4 stars), it is unavoidable that 'the Orchard Keeper' rates only three.

The great thing about reading this first McCarthy is you can see the germs of all of McCarthy's potential built into it. It contains the embryo of McCarthy's future greatness: great prose, amazing characters, beautiful scenes. If you love McCarthy, don't skip 'the Orchard Keeper', just don't expect it to blow you down, dry you out, and blow you away like 'Blood Meridian' or 'Suttree'.

not so good

I could not keep up with this book

it just changed courses to many times and I could not stay on track with the storyline.

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 Situation and the Story

Author: Vivian Gornick

Narrator: Madelyn Buzzard

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-13-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 31 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love.

All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth.

How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks - and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.

This book, which grew out of 15 years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

Members Reviews:

Barely talks about the difference between Situation and Story

I picked up this audiobook to help me understand the difference between a situation and a story and while it does touch in that it's not really what this book was about, at least that's not what I got out of it. This book is more of a short collection of the author's favorite summarized books and essays and the reason why they're written so well which is fine but what's missing for me was that at the end of each summary it's not broken down to what the situation was compared to what the story was. Well written but not what I was expecting.

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: Democracy

Author: Joan Didion

Narrator: Denise Poirier

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-22-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.

As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. Moving deftly from Honolulu to Jakarta, between romance, farce, and tragedy, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.

Critic Reviews:

"A gem...a beautifully composed story that moves with effortless authority and becomes astonishingly moving...Stirring and memorable." (Newsday)

"Striking, provocative, and brilliantly written." (The Atlantic)

Members Reviews:

My favorite Didion book.

I have four of of Didion's five novels (I haven't read the first one yet) and this is my favorite. And although I haven't yet read all of her non-fiction, this is my favorite so far of any of her books.

The writing is pristine. It is very spare. Every word, every sentence well chosen.

There actually isn't much of a story. It's more a study in character. It's really more like a long short story than a novel.

But it held my interest throughout.

If you love the craftsmanship of writing, include this book on your list of great examples.

Glimpses Of Democracy

Didion's style in this book is truly arresting. At points, the reader is just stopped, in consideration of what the author has just revealed. Her book is interesting in its style. She does in fact talk to the reader several times through the book. She develops the characters in glimpses and the plot as well; as she moves through the story of her protagonist's life. She describes a prior attempt at Democracy, that did not come to fruition. And she mixes in a dash of American Democracy and its elections and nominations.

Set in circa 1975 mostly, it speaks about the end of the Viet Nam war, but through the side long glances of people who were involved, but not talking about the fighting. Her depiction of the era and the locales is very precise, despite its exposition in little bits and pieces. The story is gripping, although not suspenseful. The book surely does exhibit Didion in one of her best written fictional books.

As a journalistically styled piece the book does a very fine job of helping people start to understand the ephemeral attitude of the people and the country in the days of the war. Disillusionment abounds. Death and destruction and human suffering are implied, but not explicitly discussed. And the message, that of one who is always trying to find oneself, but may be lost in her own mind, is universal.

The book is especially recommended for readers who are interested in the late `60's early `70's era in America. The book is truly a fine piece of literature, surrounded by events and scenery, much more than driven by the plot.

Hören Sie sich dieses volle Hörbuch kostenlos bei https://hotaudiobook.com

Titel: Tender Bar

Autor:: J. R. Moehringer

Erzähler: Ulrich Noethen

Format: Abridged

Spieldauer: 6 hrs and 51 mins

Sprache: Deutsch

Veröffentlichungsdatum: 03-21-13

Herausgeber: Argon Verlag

Kategorien: Fiction, Literary

Zusammenfassung des Herausgebers:

Eine abwechselnd bewegende und urkomische Geschichte über tapfere Kinder, mitfühlende Männer, starke Mütter und die Kraft von Träumen.

Mitglieder Bewertungen:

Great book - questionable seller - buyer beware

I bought the book through Amazon from Book Depository and received a German language version that is about 2/3 the size of a paperback with very small print. They say it was advertised in German. Maybe I missed it, but it must not have been prominently stated that it was in German and miniature. They offered for me to return at my expense and they would refund. It's in the trash.

It is a great book. I read it before and shared it with others. Apparently one too many others, because I lost it. Ordering a new one.

I'm rating the book as 5 stars. The fact that a bookseller from the UK sold me a German version is another issue.

I would say I loved it, but it was in German

I would say I loved it, but it was in German, so I could not understand it. I had to buy the English version from Barnes and Noble, and that I loved.

The Tender Bar

I did not realize the book was in German. It would be nice to highlight foreign language books to avoid ordering by mistake. It was in perfect condition and arrived on time

Rview on the Tender Bar

Wonderful book! I've read it twice and also recommend Sutton by this same author. You won't be able to put it down.

Excellent

As expected and on time

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: Requiem for a Wren

Author: Nevil Shute

Narrator: Damien Warren-Smith

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-25-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 61 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Alan Duncan returns to his family home in Australia after the war and several years of study in England. But his homecoming is marred by the mysterious suicide of his parents' quiet and reliable parlour-maid. A search through her belongings in search of clues leads to heart-breaking revelations about the woman's identity, the death of Alan's brother Bill, and, above all, the disappearance of his brother's fiancée, Janet.

Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 1899 12 January 1960) was a popular British-Australian novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons, but after the conflict he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived until his death on 12 January 1960. His most celebrated novels include Pied Piper (1942), No Highway (1948), A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957).

Critic Reviews:

My favourite novel, by my favourite author, is a wonderful example of a master's craft. This understated Second World War love story still has a freshness and sincerity more than half a century after it was written. Tragically sad but also uplifting (Gerald Seymour, Sunday Express)

Magnificent (Guardian)

There is little that Mr. Shute does not know about choosing an appealing story and telling it in a gripping way (The Times)

Members Reviews:

Bittersweet

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

Yes. I like Nevil Shute's writing. I think A Town Like Alice is his best work so I would always recommend that title first. I do think he is very good at describing life in the British Armed Services during WWII. Those that enjoy military history and writing will like his books, but even I enjoyed them (and I have little knowledge of planes and guns).

Who was your favorite character and why?

I liked the main character. I really wanted to like the female lead character, but she frustrated me by her giving up in the end because it seemed so unlike her character (from the way she acted in the past).

Have you listened to any of Damien Warren-Smiths other performances before? How does this one compare?

This is the first title I have listened to that he has read.

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

No, but I enjoyed it in long stretches.

Any additional comments?

I noticed this is offered under a different title on Audible. The other title is Breaking Wave. I guess the publisher was revamping older novels with newer titles? I prefer this title. But if you are a Shute fan and begin to purchase all the Shute Audible titles on offer, you may want to check the description of each book first to make sure you are not purchasing duplicate books. I noticed several other of his books are offered under two different titles.

Two Titles Same Book

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

Yes. Bittersweet yet hopeful

What other book might you compare Requiem for a Wren to and why?

The Breaking Wave. It's the same book

Any additional comments?

Look before you leap. I don't know why Audible doesn't warn that two titles are the same novel only different performers.

Great narration, slow story

Not much of a plot, lots of WWII detail, but an excellent narrator kept me listening.

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: Eucalyptus

Author: Murray Bail

Narrator: Humphrey Bower

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-25-13

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 13 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

On a country property a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. Over the years, as she grows into a beautiful young woman, he plants hundreds of different gum trees on his land. When Ellen is nineteen her father announces his decision: she will marry the man who can name all the species of eucalypt, down to the last tree. Suitors emerge from all corners, including the formidable, straight-backed Mr Cave, world expert on the varieties of eucalypt. And then, walking among her fathers trees, Ellen chances on a strange young man who in the days that follow tells her dozens of stories set in cities, deserts, faraway countries....

Haunting and mesmerising, Eucalyptus illuminates the nature of storytelling itself.

Critic Reviews:

"...[I]t's a pleasure simply to be immersed in Bail's caprice-prone mind." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Curious power is precisely what this novel delivers. Part of its charm is its style, the quirky sentences that rarely go where we expect, the sinister Arthur Machenesque beauty of the landscape descriptions, the meandering stories that fail to deliver their expected allegories, that never really end but instead begin others." (The Washington Post)

"One of the great and most surprising courtships in literature." (Michael Ondaatje)

Members Reviews:

COULDN'T BE SAVED

Any additional comments?

After ploughing through the first 4 Chapters, I realised that the even the best Voiceover Actor in the business (Humphrey Bower) couldn't save this book.

It was slow moving and boring in the extreme. Indeed, it felt like attending a schoolboy lecture in botany.

A joy to listen

Very unusual story. There was not a huge plot ... Just beautiful writing that meanders till the end. I will be looking for more from this author... And the narrator was perfect.

Deception

One is discombobulated until the very end, when palpably relieved by the revelation of some prior prestidigitation.

A speckled maiden and many trees

What made the experience of listening to Eucalyptus the most enjoyable?

The lyrical, poetic and very Australian story has a magic to it. It is layered with stories that gently unfold and tell about the history of people and eucalypts.

There is a reverence for beauty and no nonsense truth.

The narrator ruined this book for me.

What would have made Eucalyptus better?

A less dispassionate narrator; one who puts more expression and feeling into the work.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He read too slowly, and there was very little expression in his voice. It was delivered in a flat, unemotional style. This was not engaging and I quickly lost interest in the story.

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

Eucalyptus has an intriguing plot and I liked learning about all the different types of gum trees. I didn't like the way the female character seemed to be helplessly under the spell of the male character, and the endless stories he told seemed to have little to do with each other or anything in the novel. It was a bit like watching one unrelated youtube clip after another, and having your brain fill up with meaningless images. Perhaps this was partly because of the way it was narrated.

Any additional comments?

The narrator is also a respected theatre actor and director, and perhaps in this context he is very good at what he does.