Download New Releases Full Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary

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Title: A Good and Useful Hurt

Author: Aric Davis

Narrator: Luke Daniels

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-21-12

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 264 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Mike is a tattoo artist running his own shop, and Deb is the piercing artist he hires to round out his studios motley crew of four. The last either expects is romance, but thats what they get as they follow their off-kilter careers and love lives into complete and total disaster. When Mike follows a growing trend and tattoos the ashes of deceased loved ones into several customers tattoos, he has no idea that it will one day provide the solution - and solace - he will sorely need. And when the life of a serial killer tragically collides with the lives in the tattoo shop, Mike and Deb will stop at nothing in their quest for revenge, even if it means stepping outside the known boundaries of life and death. Ink that is full of crematory ashes, a sociopathic killer, and pain in its rawest formthis is going to hurt.When the hope of redemption runs headlong into the dark side of lifes chaos, we are left with one of the most haunting thrillers in recent memory. A Good and Useful Hurt delivers the bittersweet essence of life with the sting of a needle in skin.

Members Reviews:

Murder-mystery/love story/paranormal

An artistic man becomes a tattoo artist. He has a lot of pain in his life, along with a group of great friends who work in the tattoo parlor with him. Then comes love, pain and slight paranormal incidents that leave to a fairly cool and unexpected conclusion.

On sale right now (5/12/14) for a few more days, I encourage those of you who like slightly oddball but well written stories combined with one of the best narrators around..Luke Daniels has a great voice. I love his narrating.

This is my first Aric Davis book and I decided to try another one because I enjoyed this so much. Hope you do too!

Good book!

I really liked this book, it was nice change from your typical thriller. I liked how the girls were given voices. I really like this narrator he makes it even better!

Great cast of characters

This book was a happy surprise, good, believable characters, and a good mystery mixed with a bit of paranormal. A tattoo artist along with some old friends try to find a serial killer through some unorthodox methods of tattooing and ghosts. I will look for more books from this author.

Stephen King Fans, Say Hello to the New Kid

I wasn't expecting much from this; I downloaded it based on a recommendation and then let it sit for awhile. And I just finished it. And...it's really, really, really good. It. blew. me. away. I wasn't expecting the supernatural angle, and Davis does it as King does - the focus is on the characters, and the characters are great. Wow.

A New and Different Horror Story/Mystery

I only follow four audible reviewers. Elle from the Northwest led me to this paranormal mystery and love story, and as usual, she hit the mark. This story line is original and entertaining. This horror novel is about a talented and likable tattoo artist who unintentionally creates a new artistic trend by mixing the ashes of cremated love ones into tattoo ink. This audible mystery was very well done. The ability to suspend belief would have been challenging had it not been for the narration of Luke Daniels, who keeps it real. Worth a credit.

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Title: The List

Author: Martin Fletcher

Narrator: David Thorn

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 12-07-11

Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 24 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Winner of a Jewish National Book Award for his previous book, Walking Israel, NBC Special Correspondent Martin Fletcher uses meticulous research and his own familys history in this stunning novel.

Dramatizing explosive events in London and Palestine in the years directly following World War II, The List follows the lives of Edith and Georg, Austrian refugees who are expecting their first baby in a world unfriendly to Jews. Anti-Semitism sweeps across the streets of London even as the world learns of the atrocities of the Holocaust. As Edith and Georg desperately search for surviving family members, they struggle to stay afloat in a world riddled with terrorism, assassination attempts, and fear.

Critic Reviews:

"The List is an elegantly written and evocative story of Holocaust survivors and what they faced after the war. Martin, always the journalist, dug into his familys past to give us a novel that is at once instructive, darkly comic and ultimately inspiring." (Tom Brokaw)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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Title: Prater Violet

Author: Christopher Isherwood

Narrator: J. Paul Boehmer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-23-11

Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Isherwood's story centers on the production of the vacuous fictional melodrama Prater Violet, set in 19th-century Vienna, providing ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler annexes the real Vienna of the 1930s. The novel features the vivid portraits of imperious, passionate, and witty Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann and his disciple, a genial young screenwriter: the fictionalized Christopher Isherwood.

Critic Reviews:

"Prater Violet, in my view, is one of the best short novels in English written in this century." (Stanley Kauffmann)

"Prater Violet is the most charming novel I have read in a long time...a novel about movie writers, which is yet a novel about the life of every serious artist." (Diana Trilling)

"A deliberate historical parable. Prater Violet resembles the episodes in Goodbye to Berlin and keeps up the same high level of excellence." (Edmund Wilson)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

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Title: Latecomers

Author: Anita Brookner

Narrator: Andrew Sachs

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-04-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 12 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Hartmann was a German, Fibich an orphan of World War II....

A novel about human relationships, focusing, unusually for Brookner, on two male characters. Hartmann and Fibich met at school and 40 years later they can no more think of living apart than of divorcing their wives. This book deals with their gradual coming to terms with the emotional gaps in their lives.

Members Reviews:

Subtle Study of Characters

In one of her later interviews, Anita Brookner said she thought she should have won the Booker Prize for this novel, not Hotel du Lac. Latecomers is the story of a lifelong friendship between two men who meet in boarding school after the trauma of WWII. It is a short novel, but covers their lives and the lives of their wives, children, and grandchildren. It moves through decades quickly, often in the form of summary. It's oddly constructed but, like everything Brookner wrote, beautifully observed and deeply felt and with magnificently crafted sentences. There's not much in the way of plot, but the book's dissection of character is often compelling. There's something solemn about this novel, but it still has Brookner's gorgeous wit and flashes of humor. Andrew Sachs reads beautifully and uses his voice with artful subtlety to make distinctions in characters and accents.

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Title: Olive Kitteridge

Author: Elizabeth Strout

Narrator: Jette Mechlenburg

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-13-11

Publisher: Viatone

Ratings: 2.5 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Olive Kitteridge er hovedpersonen i romanen af samme navn, der giver et billede af livet og dets forviklinger i den lille by Crosby, Maine, men det kunne vre hvor som helst i verden. Olive er en pensioneret lrerinde, der str respekt om, og som mange frygter. Modsat sin mand Henry, apotekeren, der kommer godt ud af det med alle mennesker, har Olive en skarp tunge og kan vre knortet som et gammelt oliventr. Romanen fik strlende anmeldelser, er solgt til 28 lande, var blandt finalisterne da National Book Critics Circle Award skulle uddeles og lb af med den prestigefyldte Pulitzerpris i 2009.

Please note: This audiobook is in Danish.

Critic Reviews:

" hvor er den rrende, velskrevet og sansemttet, og den vinder, ligesom Olive, ved nrmere bekendtskab." (Michael Bach Henriksen, Kristeligt Dagblad)

Members Reviews:

Wrong language

What disappointed you about Olive Kitteridge?

My mistake in being so eager to listen to it, that I didn't realise it wasn't in English

Downloaded Wrong language! oh no!!!!!

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

i would have loved it had i understood one word

Has Olive Kitteridge turned you off from other books in this genre?

yes and no

Would you be willing to try another one of Jette Mechlenburgs performances?

no

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Olive Kitteridge?

no

Any additional comments?

Yes. Can I get my money back?

Wrong book

This book wasnt for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

This was our Book Club book for the month of November. I had read this book 4 years ago and really enjoyed it. decided to go audio because we are doing a character study. This book is in Danish'. I had to order another audio book of Olive Kitteridge in English. So, no, this audio edition did not work out for me at all.

Would you ever listen to anything by Elizabeth Strout again?

of course

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Jette Mechlenburg?

someone who narrates in English

Wrong language

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

not in English.

What do you think your next listen will be?

don't know.

How could the performance have been better?

don't know.

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

No.

Any additional comments?

the fact that it's not in english should be noted in title.

This book is not in English!!!!

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

speaking Danish maybe?

What do you think your next listen will be?

don't know

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Jette Mechlenburg?

An English narrator for the original text

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

That this book is not narrated in English should have been highlighted. Was not to be expected of an American author on an American site. I feel cheated

Any additional comments?

Nor really. I would appreciate if I could be refunded. I have simply deleted the purchase from my library.

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Title: Light from a Distant Star

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Mary McGarry Morris

Narrator: Amy Rubinate

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-15-11

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 18 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A gripping coming-of-age novel with a murder at its heart and a heroine as unforgettable as Harper Lees Scout.

Light from a Distant Star is the moving and powerful story of innocence and betrayal told in the endearingly wise voice of 13-year-old Nellie Peck. It is early summer, and her beloved fathers business is failing. Her mother has to go back to work, and Nellies older half sister has launched a troubling search for her birth father. Forced to take care of her shy younger brother, Nellie is determined to make himand herselftoughen up.

Three strangers enter Nellies protected life: mysterious and brutish Max Devaney works in her grandfathers junkyard, the thieving Bucky Saltonstall has just arrived from New York City, and Dolly Bedelia, a young stripper who rents the small apartment in the back of the Pecks house, becomes the titillating focus of Nellies eavesdropping.

Nellie is justly proud of her own infallible lie detector until violence erupts in her young life and she is silenced by fear and scandal. The truth, as she believes it, is shocking and unthinkable, and with everyones eyes riveted on her in the courtroom, Nellie finds herself compromised by moral confusion. No one will listen, no one believes her, and a mans life hangs in the balance.

A stunning evocation of innocence lost, Light from a Distant Star stands as one of the most engaging novels yet from the best-selling author of Songs in Ordinary Time.

Members Reviews:

Slow start, rushed ending

After a slow start, the story became interesting. But an abrupt ending, which wrapped up all the previous suspense in about (3) sentences, was a huge letdown. Another author that doesn't know how to write a decent finale. Very disappointing.

Predictable

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Probably not. Story line was predictable. Kept waiting for the twist I didn't see coming... But it never came.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

See above

Did Amy Rubinate do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Somewhat

Was Light from a Distant Star worth the listening time?

No

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Title: Coming Up for Air

Author: Patti Callahan Henry

Narrator: Janet Metzger

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-16-11

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 28 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Ellie Calvin is caught in a dying marriage, and she knows this. With her beloved daughter away at college and a growing gap between her and her husband - between her reality and the woman she wants to be - she doesnt quite seem to fit into her own life.

But everything changes after her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away. Ellies world turns upside down when she sees her ex-boyfriend, Hutch, at her mothers funeral and learns that he is in charge of a documentary that involved Lillian before her death. He wants answers to questions that Ellies not sure she can face, until, in the painful midst of going through her mothers things, she discovers a hidden diary - and a window into stories buried long ago. As Ellie and Hutch start speaking for the first time in years, Ellies closed heart slowly begins to open. Fighting their feelings, they set out together to dig into Lillians history. Using both the diary and a trip to the Summer House, a mysterious and seductive bayside home, they gamble that they can work together and not fall in love again. But in piecing together a decades-old unrequited-love story, they just might uncover the secrets in their own hearts. Coming Up for Air is the story of one womans search for truth - and what happens when love steps in along the way.

Members Reviews:

Fun story

I have found a new author. Very nice read with a strong character. Makes one think, probably more a woman story than a man only because the woman evolves and grows. Not something most of the male persuasion are looking for.

Unable To Recommend

I chose this book as I'd read many glowing reviews and the storyline seemed interesting. However, I found it to be a long, boring story which dragged on far too long. Through reading her mother's diary (after her mom's death), Ellie realized her mother held a life-long "secret". The quest to uncover what her mother was 'hiding' and Ellie's resulting 'a-ha moments' are just not worth spending 8 hours of your life to learn. I found the story and the narrator to be depressing - there was just no excitement or elevations - totally flat, as were the characters and their dialogue. Maybe I need to stay with books in the Mystery & Thriller section!

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Title: I Hotel

Author: Karen Tei Yamashita

Narrator: Nancy Wu, Ramon De Ocampo, Jenny Ikeda, Louis Changchien, James Yaegashi, Ali Ahn, Angela Lin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 22 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-15-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 12 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Karen Tei Yamashita has been honored with the American Book Award and Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. A stunning portrait of Asian Americans in 1960s and 70s San Francisco, I Hotel is a remarkable collection of 10 related novellas. Touching on such topics as Japanese internment camps and the Marcos dictatorship, the book presents readers with characters of rich design.

Critic Reviews:

[T]his powerful, deeply felt, and impeccably researched fiction is irresistibly evocative and overwhelming in every sense. (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Expansive and Breath Taking

Because this is a collection of 10 novellas that have overlapping characters, there were times when I wish I had an opportunity to look at the table of contents or a diagram of the relationship of all the characters. There were just so many characters that without the addition of seeing their names and roles in writing, I sometimes got lost and felt I was missing an important link that would add to the significance of the story.

The individual novellas didn't have titles and the only way I knew we were switching novellas was when the main narrator changed. I found this somewhat frustrating because I felt lost in the story.

However, besides that, this was one of the best books I have read in years. I am in awe of how Yamashita told these stories with the backdrop of the counter culture of the 1960s and 70s. She captures the violence, the sit-ins, the demonstrations, and through her attention to detail brings that period of San Francisco history to life in a way that no text book ever could.

Out of the 10 novellas, there were about two that I felt didn't live up to the other 8 but maybe that was because in the end I was listening to the book for several hours at time and may have just needed a listening break.

My other regret is that I didn't have a reading buddy for this book. It's a book that is ideal for a book club because it makes us look at ourselves in a way that is not always pleasant. And I would love to hear how other people reacted to the story, the history and the message of I Hotel.

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Title: Jamrach's Menagerie

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Carol Birch

Narrator: Steve West

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-14-11

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 54 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A thrilling and powerful novel about a young boy lured to sea by the promise of adventure and reward, with echoes of Great Expectations, Moby-Dick, and The Voyage of the Narwhal.

Jamrachs Menagerie tells the story of a nineteenth-century street urchin named Jaffy Brown. Following an incident with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Thus begins a long, close friendship fraught with ambiguity and rivalry.

Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedition. Onboard, Jaffy and Tim enjoy the rough brotherhood of sailors and the brutal art of whale hunting. They even succeed in catching the reptilian beast.

But when the ships whaling venture falls short of expectations, the crew begins to regard the dragon - seething with feral power in its cage - as bad luck, a feeling that is cruelly reinforced when a violent storm sinks the ship.

Drifting across an increasingly hallucinatory ocean, the survivors, including Jaffy and Tim, are forced to confront their own place in the animal kingdom. Masterfully told, wildly atmospheric, and thundering with tension, Jamrachs Menagerie is a truly haunting novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.

From the Hardcover edition.

Critic Reviews:

"One of the best stories Ive ever read; an extraordinarily good and completely original book." (A. S. Byatt, author of The Children's Book in a BBC Interview)

Transcendently researched, unsparing and hypnotic, Jamrach's Menagerie takes us to the edge of endurance where it becomes impossible to distinguish the captor from the captive. Carol Birch's urgent and wise story goes far beyond any whaling expedition, plumbing the depths of how we create our own humanity. It is a thrill to welcome this remarkable novelist to a larger American audience." (Sheri Holman, author of The Dress Lodger)

[T]here are enough strange sights, pervasive smells and sounds and curious characters to keep most novelists and readers going strong for three times the number of pages that there are here a rather subtler story of the hazy line between camaraderie and rivalry and of the bonds both forged and broken in extreme adversity Birch does more than simply recreate history she conjures something far stranger and less immediately graspable than a straightforward recitation of facts would allow. Jaffy's journey is suffused with yearning to find his place in the fluid but implacable hierarchy of the seamen, to understand the mysteries of the sea and its creatures and of the unknown and unknowable places that he witnesses rendered with exceptional control, elucidating the see-sawing bond between Jaffy and Tim and the gradual disintegration of the sailors' bodies and minds Birch has spun us a captivating yarn of high seas and even higher drama. (The Guardian)

Members Reviews:

Fun & Meaningful

I gave this book 3 stars but I am a tough critic. I could easily see stretching that upward to 3 and a half. The narration is terrific and carries you along. The first half of this book is really, really good. The second half drags and you are forced to endure a bit of a long drawn out plot.

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Title: Samskara & Other Stories

Author: Dr. Udupi R. Ananthamurthy

Narrator: Ritwik Simha, C. R. Simha

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-31-11

Publisher: booksTALK audiobooks

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Samskara has attained iconic status in the pantheon of Kannada literature. It is hailed as a unique literary piece in the Navya tradition. The novel is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago when it was first published. Values-tradition, mores-rationality, rituals-humanity - the eternal conflict between these ideas is the crux of this novel of Praneshacharya's conflict, the question of Naranappa's fate, Chandri's existence and the plight of the town. The listener becomes one with the characters and the story. This complex story has the power to become an unforgettable experience.

Please note: this title is in the Kannada language.

Members Reviews:

It is not the entire book

C R Simha is one of the best narrators and actors in Kannada and I was delighted to find this audio book on audible. I enjoyed my drive to work and the sense of nostalgia while listening to Kannada narration far away from home. Halfway through the book, when it is getting interesting and has become my best use of time, Simha stops and so does the narration of the book Samskara. I have no clue what the other books are and who is reading it. It is first a woman and then another story with a random man. Extremely disappointed with this. Can i please have a refund or a correct and complete version of this book please?