Get Most Popular Full Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary Top Rated

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Title: What Language Is That (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

Author: Uwem Akpan

Narrator: Robin Miles

Format: Unabridged

Length: 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-19-11

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few listeners will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. This singular collection takes the listener inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.

Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.

Critic Reviews:

"Akpan wants you to see and feel Africa, its glory and its pain. And you do, which makes this an extraordinary book." (O Magazine)

"In the corrupt, war-ravaged Africa of this starkly beautiful debut collection, identity is shifting, never to be trusted.... Akpan's people, and the dreamlike horror of the worlds they reveal, are impossible to forget." (People)

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Title: Queens Walk in the Dusk

Author: Thomas Burnett Swann

Narrator: Jennifer M. Dixon

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-19-11

Publisher: Wildside Press LLC

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Thomas Burnett Swann was a brilliant fantasy writer who died in 1976. He wrote primarily about the ancient Greek and Roman world, blending myth with romance and adventure. A reviewer in the Village Voice sums his work up well: "Swann's neo-romantic fantasies of the past are unique. He uses the stuff of myth but with twists and inventions of his own."

Queens Walk in the Dusk is a retelling of the romance of Dido and Aeneas. It is a companion volume to Green Phoenix.

Members Reviews:

Queens Walk in the Dusk, a Prequel of the Mellonia Series

This was Swann's last published novel, and the only one to ever be released in hardcover. It is the story of Aeneas, wandering hero of Troy, and Queen Dido of Carthage. It features folk from the prehuman era: dwarves, nerieds, and demigods. This novel, by far, was Swann's very best.

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Title: Amphibian

Author: Carla Gunn

Narrator: Anita Roy Dobbs

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-03-11

Publisher: Iambik Audio Inc

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He knows that if you wet a dog's food with your saliva and he refuses to eat it then he's top dog, and he knows that dolphins can sleep half a brain at a time. What he doesn't know, though, is why his grandfather died, or why waste-of-flesh Lyle always picks on him. Or why his parents can't live together after all, when other mate-for-life animals have a fight, it's not like one of them just packs his bags and leaves the country. To make it to-infinity worse, he's worried sick about what humans are doing to the planet, and his mother is worried sick about him. But shouldn't everyone be losing sleep over the fact that a quarter of all Earth's mammals are on the Red List of Threatened Species? So, when a White's tree frog ends up in an aquarium in his fourth-grade classroom, it's the last straw, and he and his best friend, Bird, are spurred to action.

Members Reviews:

Five Stars

classroom text

original and beautifully crafted

Original, and beautifully crafted in the voice of 9 year old Phineas William Walsh, Gunn's novel tells the story of a child dealing with the inconsistencies of human relationships.

"How do people who love each other one day, no longer love each other the next", asks Phin? "Where does all the good stuff go, the happy times, when somebody dies?" And why do teachers prefer "their" answers to the "right" answers?

Phin is a supremely engaging bright child; at turns adorable, frustrating, irritating, sensitive, and demanding. He grieves for a world being destroyed by careless human beings, and he wants desperately to engage other children and adults in the importance of making change while there is still time, and still animals to save. He keeps a list of endangered species and is worried that by the time he grows up, it will be too late.

I found myself fearing for Phin, for this intense child overwhelmed with the seeming impossibility of getting adults to pay attention. He is bullied at school and is hurt and angry at the loss of his father through his parent's separation: "Some male primates don't stick around to look after their kids but human fathers are supposed to be more like the marmoset, who does. What the heck's wrong with my father," he asks?

The sometimes somber mood, the sense of impending catastrophe as Phin's behaviour becomes more and more difficult is lightened by wonderful bits of Phin curiosity. "Once you are in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?" His relationship with his sensitive, caring, frightened out of her mind for Phin mother is a lesson in creative and meaningful parenting.

Kudos to Carla for creating such a wonderful authentic story. I only hope she follows this book with a "Book of Phin Curiosities' geared for other children.

Johanna Bertin

Author of Don Messer: the Man Behind the Music, Goose Lane Editions, 2009

Awesome!

I loved this book. It is written from a young person's perspective and although I am many years older, I thoroughly enjoyed this trip into Phineas' mind. His idiosyncratic behaviour was entertaining and his character very very likable. I would highly recommend this book for its plot, character and humour.

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Title: Être the Cow

Author: Sean Kenniff

Narrator: Dan Parr

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-29-11

Publisher: Health Communications Inc

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A poignant tale about pushing limits and challenging destiny.

Humiliated by his hoofed legs, the flies on his haunches, and the grass in his mouth, a bull named Être tells his tender story about the brutal insignificance of cow life at Gorwell Farm.

In a world where the line between disgrace and dignity is drawn by a pasture fence, Être finds himself alone in his awareness and utterly powerless to change his circumstances. Être searches for understanding among the broads, bulls, and calves on the pasture, but finds none. On the best of days, Être listens to the farmer's boy sing lullabies at the fence. He likes those songs and loves the boy. But the grasses thin as the seasons pass, the cows hunger, and Être grows desperate. He is the only cow truly starving.

Critic Reviews:

"Être the Cow is one of the most important books written in a generation. Être's fight for freedom and dignity is a fight for life itself. Sean Kenniff's Être the Cow depicts a very human struggle - and it's a story I won't soon forget." (Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu)

Members Reviews:

An Allegorical Triumph!

Do you dare to think outside the box, combat the norm, and defy your destiny? Do you? If you don't, it's quite understandable. Ignorance is bliss. And going with the flow is so easy.

tre the Cow decided that he would think outside the fence, combat the ranch, and defy the chute. He paid a heavy, heavy price...

I am a big fan of Animal Farm by George Orwell and Chicken Run by Peter Lord. Of course I had to pick up Sean Kenniff's tre the Cow.

I finished this novella over the span of three evenings. It is not because it wasn't a page turner, but rather it was too fascinating of a read for me to speed through it. I slowed down on purpose. Things in a cow's world happen slowly. Just imagine grazing on the same ranch day after day, after day ... And to think like cow isn't easy either. You really have to stop and smell the grass. I wanted very much to get to know tre, feel his feelings, and know his life as though it was mine.

This is how the book made me feel as soon as I started reading the first line, narrated by tre himself. I was so drawn into his world that I started to think and feel like him. It's no wonder that after I put down the book, I was haunted by his dreams and his sacrifices for days.

tre the Cow tells the naked truth of one cow's life, which can be mirrored in many ways by our own. Don't worry, it won't make you a vegetarian. It will however, make you think, like you have never thought before...

A World We Think We Know

Enter a world we've all passed by, and a few of us have encountered in depth. Etre the Cow is a tone poem, an unconventional story told by a pensive narrator, a bull on a cattle farm. This short book will take you deep into a meditation on the constraints humans create for nature and ourselves.

This is the book we should have read when we were young, the one that isn't about Old MacDonald's cheerful haven. It's a first-hand--first-hoof?--account of how taming nature to serve our habitual hungers can dull us all.

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Title: Dancer

Author: Colum McCann

Narrator: Jonathan Davis, Nick Pauling, Jessica Almasy, Marc Vietor, Suzanne Toren

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-06-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Dancer is the erotically charged story of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev as told through the cast of those who knew him: there is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his provincial town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and Victor, the Venezuelan street hustler, who reveals the lurid underside of the gay celebrity set. Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the horrors of the Second World War to the wild abandon of New York in the eighties, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous: doormen and shoemakers, nurses and translators, Margot Fonteyn, Eric Bruhn and John Lennon. And at the heart of the spectacle stands the artist himself, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-to-be-met need for perfection.

Members Reviews:

Readable, But Disappointing

As a ballet nerd who has enjoyed McCann's work in the past, I expected to like ~Dancer~ more than I did.

Unfortunately, while McCann's evocative style shines through, the story suffers from a disjointed narrative style. McCann shifts between first and third person frequently, which could a useful device if the voices of the first-person narrators were more clearly developed.

Perhaps the most effective component of the entire novel the way the titular Dancer becomes not so much a central protagonist, but a full reflecting upon the other characters and upon the challenging times circumstances in which they live.

On the whole, not a bad read, but not a great one, either. ~Dancer~ left me with a sense of a potentially-great work approached capriciously and ultimately left incompleteâand while one might see that as a keen analogy for life of Rudolf Nureyev, I don't it was intended as such.

TL;DR: 5/10ish, worth a read if you're a ballet nut. Expect to regularly grit your teeth over the phrase "toe shoes."

... think the miraculousness of Colum McCann's writing can be better appreciated by reading his books Transatlantic and Let the ...

I think the miraculousness of Colum McCann's writing can be better appreciated by reading his books Transatlantic and Let the World Spin. Both are Five Star+. Now there are others he's written that I haven't read as yet, so this is not meant to discount them. Like all masterful writers, he gives beautiful voice to those things we know deep down and have diffulculty articulating.

Well-written, but with problems

Having loved other novels by this author, I had high hopes for Dancer. The story of Nureyev is beautifully written, his early life in the post-war USSR well-described. And yet, the dancer, himself, becomes less likeable the more his fame increases. I remember Nureyev's defection, his career and his death from AIDS. I think McCann worked hard to be true to the life of this extraordinary dancer, and did a good job getting inside his head, but I found myself skipping ahead in many places, wishing he would move the story along not really caring what happened when the dancer met Rock Hudson, etc. I often had a sense that I was reading material that had already been covered.

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Title: Hopes Cadillac

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Patricia Page

Narrator: C. J. Critt

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-23-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Patricia Page, whose stories generate enthusiastic praise when they appear in the New Yorker, brings back the heady days of the late 1960s in a touching journey of the heart. Hopes Cadillac is filled with the small, vivid details of this freewheeling decade, and Hope, its often-disheveled hero, is sure to capture your heart. Hope Fairman - wife, mother, indifferent housekeeper - watches her world disintegrate as her successful husband divorces her and wins custody of their two children. In despair, Hope begins to look for a way to survive the financial and emotional chaos that remains. But at this point, instead of hanging on to cliches or giving in to soggy despair, Hope begins to look for the things that feel true to her. What she learns, and where she goes make for a delightfully funny, poignant, and hopeful book. Patricia Page has an unfailing ear for the descriptions and dialogue that bring the optimistic 1960s culture to life. Unsentimental, but never harsh, Page reminds us that sometimes the greatest realizations come quietly, in their own good time.

Members Reviews:

An overlooked gem by a writer's writer

Page recreates 1960s Houston with writing that can only be called exceptional. This is a book by a real writer.

The book is about Hope, a married woman who is looking for the new ways of life being promised by the Beatles, Ken Kesey, the Firesign Theatre, and Terry Southern. Page captures the 1960s as a wonderful, exciting, and even scary dream of emerging consciousness. Frontiers were being expanded all the time--sexual, political, racial, and artistic, to name just a few. Page relates these frontiers in her story of Hope and of her husband, who see these frontiers quite differently.

Page's pen is sharp and penetrating about the times: Sex was never just sex, drugs were never just drugs, and husbands were never just husbands. What grips you as you read is who and what proves to be life-affirming, and who and what proves to be destructive. Very few books can be called truthful artistic statements of given periods, but this is one of them. What happens to Hope is what happened to not a few women, and if you didn't live through it to know it, this book will tell you. You will never see the "freedoms" of Hope and the 1960s the same way again. There was always a price to pay. A terrific, moving first novel!

Disappointing

Hope, a bohemian type of woman, lose custody of her children to her ex-husband Clay, a more conventional person. Her friends are mostly from her Unitarian church who are free-spirits and general misfits.

I felt the portrait of the Unitarians as free-love, pot-smoking, air headed hippies was unfair and biased. I've never met people simular to these at the UU church I attended.

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Title: Who Was Gertie Ford?

Author: Chris Sullivan

Narrator: Chris Sullivan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-18-11

Publisher: JMP

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In 1966, just two weeks after the IRA blew up Nelson's Pillar in O'Connell Street, Dublin, Eddie McGrath is knocked down and killed by the airport bus near the spot where the Pillar used to stand. His death turns his 17-year-old daughter, Nuala, into an orphan. She never knew her mother, Gertie, at all, and when she looked into her father's things she found items of her mother that deeply disturbed her. The tale of Gertie Ford will take the listener to the west coast of Ireland, in search of Gertie, to a world of adventure, heartbreak and tragedy set in the mid forties and 1966 in Dublin, Sligo, and Donegal.

In Sligo, Nuala stays with a family of brothers under the pretence that she is going to marry one of them; in Donegal, Gertie is introduced to poteen smuggling; and in Dublin, the listener is given a glimpse of the infamous Magdalene Laundries/Asylums. There will be heartbreak, rape, and incest, but it is very minimal as there is a lot of comedy, both in situations and dialogue, and the question as to what Gertie was doing in Dublin on that first day of spring will be answered.

Members Reviews:

Share Nuala's journey to trace her roots.

Would you listen to Who Was Gertie Ford? again? Why?

Yes - It is about a young Irish girl who is searching for the truth about the mother she never knew. It is about triumph over adversity with something for everyone. Cleverly written by an outstanding author who keeps you guessing right until the end.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Gertie - because although her life was hard she treated each setback as a challenge and never gave up looking for love and happiness.

Which scene was your favorite?

I don't have one - they were all equally entertaining.

If you could rename Who Was Gertie Ford?, what would you call it?

The title is perfect - I wouldn't change it.

Any additional comments?

If you are looking for a novel that holds you captivated from start to finish, then this is the one for you. I highly recommend it.

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Título: La Cueva de la Mora

Autor: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

Narrador: Sonolibro

Formato: Unabridged

Duración: 17 mins

Idioma: Español

Fecha de publicación: 04-11-11

Editor: Sonolibro

Calificaciones: 4.5 de 5 de 4 votos

Categorías: Fiction, Literary

Resumen del editor:

¿Quién ha dicho que solo puede haber guerra y odio entre dos culturas distintas....? La Vueva de Mora - ¿Penetrar en la Cueva de la Mora? No sabe usted que de ella sale todas las noches......Estando de vuelta entre los suyos tras haber sido rescatado de su cautiverio entre moros, el caballero, nuestro héroe, no puede evitar su melancolía: durante su cautiverio se enamoró....Un trágico final para un bello amor que feneció en el intento de hacer entenderse a dos culturas que habían ido de la mano a lo largo de la historia, y que pudiendo convivir en paz, parecen no haber tenido interés en ello.

Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.

Opiniones de los miembros:

Five Stars

Buen libro

Brauer cuentista

Gustavo Adolfo is one of the most beloved poets of the Spanish language, his Rimas are known by all young(and old) romanticism and lovers. I was mot acquainted with his short stories. It is indeed a pleasure to have found them.

Highly recommend this story as well as his beloved poetry.

una historia clásica que nunca pasa de moda

una historas que como todas los de Becquer se caracteriza por su lenguaje poético y su argumento misterioso. El ritmo es un poco lento para mi gusto, pero el final es sorpresivo; vale la pena leerlo. Sobre todo porque en Amazon los libros como éste, que son una garantía, son gratuitos o muy baratos.

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Title: The Recognitions

Author: William Gaddis

Narrator: Nick Sullivan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 48 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 02-07-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.

Contemporary life collapses the distinction between the "real" and the "virtual" worlds, and Gaddis' novel pre-empts our common obsessions by almost half a century. This novel tackles the blurring of perceptual boundaries. The Matrix and Blade Runner pale in comparison to this epic novel.

Members Reviews:

The fuse of the inauthentic in multiple voices

A powerful cocktail of voices and idioms put together in an outrageously brilliant exuberance of language, with sentences that leave you shaking your head in chuckling stupefaction, as in a Charlie Parker solo. Despite the playfulness of language and irreverence, the searing passion for creativity and form burns against the masterfully described social frame of wealthy, elite superficiality, and radiates through, overriding the somewhat overburdened erudition. The only caveat is that the listener wishes to pause and revisit, retrace and rediscover the magic of a passage that is rendered fleeting without the comfort of the paper copy to fixate one's eyes on -- a recurring feature in this masterpiece.

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Title: Kid Scanlan

Author: H. C. Witwer

Narrator: L. J. Ganser

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-03-11

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

H.C. Witwer was an American short story author, most notable for his tales of basebasll and boxing. Witwer's obvious humor is brought to life by L.J. Ganser's excellent narration of this hilarious story of a boxer.

Editorial Reviews:

H. C. Witwer's humorous story about a boxer, told from the point of view of his manager, gets a big boost from narrator L. J. Ganser's truly delightful performance. Winner of three AudioFile Earphones Awards, as well as the 2005 Nonfiction Audie, Ganser uses a whiskey-flavored voice to embody the skeptical, wise-guy diction of manager Johnny Green as he recounts the adventures - and misadventures - of Kid Scanlan, who goes off to make movies after becoming a boxing champ. Ganser burnishes the dames, thugs and regular joes of the story with their own idiosyncratic traits, and listeners will find themselves laughing at Johnny's yarns about Kid's troubles, especially with a certain Miss Vincent.

Members Reviews:

Ganser made this book a great read.

Would you consider the audio edition of Kid Scanlan to be better than the print version?

Most definitely

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

Fun read made better by the narration

Have you listened to any of L. J. Gansers other performances before? How does this one compare?

One of Ganser's best.

Any additional comments?

The story was fun, but L. J. made this book a 5* read.