How To Download Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary Popular Authors

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Title: Cloudless May

Author: Storm Jameson

Narrator: Jean Brassard

Format: Unabridged

Length: 23 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-06-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Cloudless May explores the political and psychological circumstances of the defeat of France in the spring of 1940. The audiobook follows the life of a French businessman, his friends, and his mistress, as they try to weather the storm that is the fall of France, during the devastation of the war.

Storm Jameson (1891-1986) was born to a North Yorkshire family of shipbuilders. Jameson's fiery mother, who bore three girls, encouraged Storm (christened Margaret Storm) to pursue an academic education. After being taught privately and at Scarborough municipal school she won one of three county scholarships which enabled her to read English Literature at Leeds University. She then went on to complete an MA in European drama at King's College London. During her career Jameson wrote 45 novels, numerous pamphlets, essays, and reviews, in an effort to make money. Her personal life suffered, and her first marriage to schoolmaster Charles Douglas Clarke was an unhappy one. After they divorced in 1925, Jameson went on to marry Guy Chapman, a fellow author, and remained with him despite her apparent rejection of normal domestic life. Storm Jameson was always politically active, helping to publish a Marxist journal in the British section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers in 1934 and attending anti-fascist rallies.

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Title: The Shelter Cycle

Author: Peter Rock

Narrator: Amy Rubinate

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-02-13

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

An American original, Peter Rock brings our strangest beliefs to vivid and sympathetic life in this haunting novel inspired by true events.

The Shelter Cycle tells the story of two children, Francine and Colville, who grew up in the Church Universal and Triumphant, a sect that predicted the world would end in the late 1980s. While their parents built underground shelters to withstand the impending Soviet missile strike, Francine and Colville played in the Montana wilderness, where invisible spirits watched over them.

When the prophesized apocalypse did not occur, the denominations members resurfaced and the children were forced to grow up in a world they believed might no longer exist.

Twenty years later Francine and Colville are reunited while searching for an abducted girl. Haunted by memories and inculcated beliefs, they must confront the churchs teachings. If all the things they were raised to believe were misguided, why then do they suddenly feel so true?

Critic Reviews:

A stunning novel about faith and disillusionment and the lingering power of the past. In spare, lyrical prose, and with immense compassion, Peter Rock illuminates a strange and little-known chapter in American religious history. At times, Rocks uncanny ability to combine mysticism with blunt realism is reminiscent of Flannery OConnor. (Tom Perrotta, New York Times best-selling author)

As luminous as it is sinister and innocent, The Shelter Cycle is a book not quite like any other. Peter Rock renders masterfully the ferocity and intensity of bonds between childhood friends as well as adults, coupling also the inescapable loneliness and yet hope within the human soul." (Rick Bass, award-winning author)

Peter Rock is marvelous at revealing both the insightful strangeness and the madness erring on the outskirts of civilization, and at showing with great sympathy how quickly we can slip from one to the other. A wonderfully humane book about the weirdnesses that make up peoples pasts and the way they persist into the present." (Brian Evenson, International Horror Guild Award-winning author)

Members Reviews:

Great story

This reminds me a little of The NY Times fiction stories. Good book all around

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Title: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Author: Thornton Wilder

Narrator: John Chancer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-22-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Bridge of San Luis Rey established Thornton Wilder as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.

An ancient bridge collapses over a gorge in Peru, hurling five people into the abyss. It seems a meaningless human tragedy; but one witness, a Franciscan monk, believes the deaths might not be as random as they appear. Convinced that the disaster is a punishment sent from Heaven, the monk sets out to discover all he can about the travellers. The five strangers were connected in some way, he thinks, so there must be a purpose behind their deaths. But are their lost lives the result of sin... or of love?

An acclaimed novelist and playwright, Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) won three Pulitzer Prizes: for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and for the two plays, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. Wilders other honours include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committees Medal for Literature.

Critic Reviews:

"There are books that haunt you down the years. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is of this kind. (The Independent)

Few writers have better captured the vanities and complexities of the ruling classes in Spanish South America. (The Times)

Members Reviews:

Unexpectedly and totally brilliant...

There is a real excitement in stumbling into a writer that youve only vaguely heard of, of whom you hear little and, on reflection cant quite remember why youve started to read...only to find that within a couple of pages you know that youve made a lifelong find.

I cant really understand why Thornton Wilder is not better known and more widely read here. This book has the refreshing smack of an Umberto Eco, with the humour and authority of a James Joyce and the invention of Haruki Murakami - and yet this book is nearly one hundred years old? Quite unbelievable - unbelievably good from start to finish. Really, really give it a try - heres a novel that delivers on a breadth and depth with no indication in the biography as to where this might come from. Peru? A collapsing bridge? July 1714 I mean, come on.....

Ghastly!

If this book wasnt for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

Sadly, I did not get a chance to review the story due to the narrators highly irritating voice.

Would you ever listen to anything by Thornton Wilder again?

Not if this narrator is chosen.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrators voice was terrible! Schreechy and irritating characterisations.I could only listen for a very short time before giving up.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Severe irritation!

Any additional comments?

Very disappointing

A great tale

A great tale. Wilder brings you to love his flawed characters, and mourn their untimely ends. Some issues with pronunciation were distracting in the performance, but still a good way to enjoy the drive to work.

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Title: Farewell Waltz

Author: Milan Kundera

Narrator: Richmond Hoxie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-21-13

Publisher: Canongate Faber Audio

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance. Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy.

Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, this book was first published in 1976. This beautiful new translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone and intentions. As such it offers an opportunity for both the discovery and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's works.

Members Reviews:

Hilarious

Definitely my favorite book I've had to read all school year. Very dark humor which made the story very interesting and entertaining all the way. Bought used and was in excellent condition!

Five Stars

A great book by a great artist.

Author of the Human Condition

Absolutely love Kundera's books!!

Farewell Schmaltz: Square Dancing Around Nihilism in a Bowler Hat-- Cane Handy, Pinky High and Chin Raised.

Summary: Pietistic Nihilism, Subtle Narcism, Soap Opera Discourse.

The story is simple soap opera fare. The characters are poorly dissimulated (that is, articulated) doppelgangers of the author. The product (a labour of ego, i.e. masturbation) is a sort of vain self-referential humor (cynicism in tartuffe airs) that seduces the reader into an alliance with the narrator(s) (Kundera) against the more or less superficial subjective reflections (Kundera) on the part of the personalities concerned (again, Kundera). The ignorant do not know: the stupid do not know they do not know. Kundera has here an expose of ignorance that is stupid-- it thinks it is 'art' being anti-art, but is merely a cipher of the culture it pretends to escape; the author is in a cave of modernity and gets off on leading others into a further permutation of it and what makes it radically evil is that he pretends to show you the way out with facile threads of irony (admitting the spiral tangent it is).

This novel is not farce: it is all very calculated and nothing actually outlandish takes place. It is not satire either, because it fails to elucidate anything. It's not a parody, it parodies nothing except life because it must. As a reflection on the intransigence of Time and the senselessness of the acts by humans occurring in it, the novel succeeds only inasmuch as an image of a mirror of a mirror are shown to be mere anagrams of what is (a mirror) [This both is and should sound stupid.]. The problem: no one needs to be told this or read a book such as this to know/understand/experience what has just been described. It is one thing to laugh at the vanity of 'humanity' in the sense Schopenhauer meant (whom Kundera must be familiar with) but entirely another to laugh at one's vanity because one MUST laugh; is incontinence not the very essence of egoism?

The laughter is self-conscious and most of all, forgettable. --This is not a book of laughter and forgetting. It is a book to laugh at and forget. Everyone has better things to do and books to read than this cultured trash.

Not what was expected

The book was not in great condition, with lots of bending in the cover and pages and it also had highlights and markings throughout that were not in the product description.

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Title: What the Family Needed

Author: Steven Amsterdam

Narrator: Tanya Eby

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-21-13

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 20 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

"Okay, tell me which you want," Alek asks his cousin at the outset of What the Family Needed."To be able to fly or to be invisible?" And soon Giordana, a teenager suffering the bitter fallout of her parents divorce, finds that she can, at will, become as invisible as she feels. Later, Aleks mother, newly adrift in the disturbing awareness that all is not well with her younger son, can suddenly swim with Olympic endurance. Steven Amsterdams incandescent novel follows the members of this gorgeously imagined extended family over three decades, as they each discover, at a moment of crisis, that they possess a supernatural power.

But instead of crimes to fight and villains to vanquish, the family confronts inner demons, and their extraordinary abilities prove to be not so much magic weapons but expressions of their fears and longings as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what fate deals them. As the years pass, their lives intersect and overlap in surprising and poignant ways, and the real magic is revealed to lie not in their superpowers but in the very human and miraculous ways they are able to accept, protect, and love one another.

Members Reviews:

An Unusual Story of a Family with Super Powers

This is a story about a family that is much like any other family. The story spans the lives of numerous family members as they learn to cope with life. What makes this family different from others is that each of the members of the family develops a super power--just when he or she seems to need it most. The powers really do seem to reflect just what the family needed.

The book's chapters are each focused on one member of the family. While the focus is on that particular family member, each chapter includes other family members as their lives intersect. A daughter discovers the ability to turn invisible, and her brother can fly. Their mother can hear the thoughts of other people, and her sister becomes a super-powered swimmer. The mother's brother-in-law can make (most) of his wishes come true, and his and his wife's children each have their own powers: one son can cause people to fall in love with each other. The other son has a power that is quite special and is not revealed until the final chapter of the book.

Each chapter ended with a mini-cliffhanger, which certainly kept the story moving along. I was eager to learn what would happen next. Each character's story was well told and interesting. I greatly enjoyed witnessing this family grow over the course of 30ish years in such a short amount of time. My only complaint is the ending. Much like the other chapters, the book seemed to end on a bit of a cliff-hanger that was meant to wrap up the book. I thought it ended just a bit too abruptly, and I would have liked to learn just about what would happen next. Who knows? Maybe there will be a sequel!

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Title: Wife to Mr Milton

Author: Robert Graves

Narrator: Karen Cass

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 03-07-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Marie Powell is 16 when her father marries her to the poet John Milton in payment of a debt. They move to a pretty garden-house in London, but she struggles to adjust to her new life. Her husband is high-minded and unyielding, and only makes Marie long for the man she really loves. As Civil War sweeps across England and the King is killed, a battle starts to rage between husband and wife - one that only the powerful can win.

Told through the fictional journals of Milton's wife, Robert Graves's sympathetic and sensitive reconstruction of her tragic life is a convincing, linguistically rich portrait of 17th-century England, ravaged by war. Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 - 7 December 1985) was an English poet and novelist, scholar, translator, and writer of antiquity, specialising in Classical Greece and Rome. During his long life he produced more than 140 works. Graves's translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths, the memoir of his early life, Good-bye To All That, and his speculative study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, have never been out of print. Graves earned his living by writing popular historical novels, including I, Claudius(for which he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), King Jesus, The Golden Fleece and Count Belasarius.

He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1961 and made an honorary fellow of St Johns College, Oxford, in 1971.

Critic Reviews:

Vivid, rich, and forthright." (Sunday Times)

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Title: One Minus One

Subtitle: Nancy Pearl's Book Lust

Author: Ruth Doan MacDougall

Narrator: Amy McFadden

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-19-13

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Capturing in rich detail the freewheeling '60s, One Minus One explores a young womans journey toward self-realization following a painful divorce.

In 1969, 30-year-old Emily Bean moves to a town in New Hampshires coastal region to take a job as a high-school teacher. Struggling with the challenges of single life and still in love with her ex-husband, David, Emily attracts the attention of local radio personality Warren, and also Cliff, the head of the high-school English department, who might perhaps take Davids place in her life. Just as the town must inevitably change with the times, Emily must try to make a new future even as she longs to recapture the past.

Book Lust Rediscoveries is a series devoted to reprinting some of the best (and now out of print) novels originally published from 1960 to 2000. Each book is personally selected by NPR commentator and Book Lust author Nancy Pearl and includes an introduction by her, as well as discussion questions for book groups and a list of recommended further reading.

Members Reviews:

"One Minus One" Adds Up to Excellence

I've been a GREAT fan of Ruth Doan MacDougall since the 1970s. WHY are her books so hard to find? You can hardly find them in libraries. I leapt at the chance to re-read "One Minus One" when (thanks to "Book Lust" celeb librarian Nancy Pearl who made it one of her books folks ought to "rediscover"), I learned it had at least become available on Kindle. At one point, I owned copies of all of MacDougall's books, but I am too nice and I lent them out to friends and cousins and such and, well, you know what that means.... But. To The Matter at Hand: With MacDougall, the fact that a novel has "twists" or ample "surprises" is always beside the point. She is a beautiful, nuanced writer who creates rich characters you fully believe and can relate to. I know I read "One Minus One" long ago, but because it is about a woman trying to get her bearings after a divorce she did not possibly want or ever expect, I couldn't relate to is as well back when I was a kid (in jr high, I think, when I read it long ago). I loved every minute spent reading "One Minus One" and am still thinking about it a lot, several days after finishing it. There wasn't one false note. I love that MacDougall can at once write straightforward and eloquently about matters of the heart without ever getting sappy. I also appreciate that she writes men as well as she does girls and women. Please, Amazon, Please: Give readers more of the superb MacDougall!

One Minus One Equal Zero. That Describes This Book.

Recommended by Nancy Pearl is usually good enough for me. She is a great literary critic, and I trust her input. When she says a book is good, then it is good. This one did not live up to that superlative billing. One Minus One did live up to itsâ title, however: that math equals zero. This book had no real story line that led to anything; it was a rather depressing novel about a woman who became single after her husband died, and her she is, a middle aged woman, no children, bereft of husband, and really absent a life that had any texture to it. She was wandering; a ship without a rudder, and this story is an attempt to chronicle her quest for meaning. She never found it.

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Title: Empire of Dreams

Author: Giannina Braschi, Tess ODwyer (translator)

Narrator: Adriana Sananes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-21-12

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 1 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In the Hispanic American classic Empire of Dreams, Giannina Braschi calls for a revolution in poetry - a revolution against the Latin American Boom. New York City becomes the site of liberation for its marginal characters who seek to experience the center of power, of meaning, of feeling, and of personal identity. Clowns, buffoons, shepherds, magicians, and madmen perform their fantasies in the city streets. In a climatic episode of a pastoral revolution, shepherds take over the top floor of the Empire State Building, where they dance and sing, "Now we do whatever we please! Whatever we please! Whatever we damn well please!"

Newly translated by Tess ODwyer, this audio edition captures the euphoric spirit of the Spanish original and is an exquisite piece of artistry in its own right.

Critic Reviews:

"An in-your-face assertion of the vitality of Latino culture in the U.S." (New York Daily News)

"A striking collection of brief, evocative prose." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Robust, exuberant poetry with a Rabelaisian Inexhaustability

Fecundity, profundity, and unbridled originality. American poet Alicia Ostriker, author of "Volanco Lover" and "Writing like a Woman", admires Latin American poet Giannina Braschi's "Empire of Dreams" for its Rabelaisian inexhaustability and its "sheer erotic energy that defies definition and dogma." I admire the works of Giannina Braschi and Alicia Ostriker for their command of image and musicality, their quirky sense of humor, and love of Life with a capital "L". Best-loved poems in this beautiful collection start with the lines:

1. "On the top floor of the Empire State, a shepherd stood up to sing and dance."

2. "I have been a fortune teller. Ages Ago I told the fortune of buffoons and madmen."

3. "I've just turned life into a proverb. I just killed it."

Braschi is a joyful erudite--a modern mastern of poetry and song--with a fierce commitment to beauty and a freedom of invention in form and structure. No poetry library is complete without her works.

ONLY an English major could like this!

Thankfully I got on a 99 cent sale! Not at all what I thought it would be from description given on the sale of the day. I doubt I could or would ever actually get beyond a couple of pages of this drivel.

Poetic License

First, I must say that because the book was listed as Literature & Fiction on Amazon Vine, I expected to receive a novel. I didn't expect to receive a volume of connected poetry that begs reading and rereading and only then yields some grasp of understanding. The wordplay though is so tantalizing that you can pick it up again and again. Amazon's claim that it is an "intriguing and hypnotizing work" does not fall short.

Despite being Hispanic-American myself and a former English teacher, I have read few Latino poets. While I've read Shakespeare's sonnets a thousand times, I found Latina poet Giannina Braschi's poetry to be utterly different in its form but still captivating. Her writing is as playful as it is deep, as layered as it is simple.

"Empire of Dreams" claims to chronicle a decade-long affair with 1980s New York where I was born but it is much more than that.

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Title: The Magician

Author: W Somerset Maugham

Narrator: David Rintoul

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-19-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Set in the bohemian café society of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, Maugham's exploration of hypnotism and the occult was inspired by the sinister black magician Aleister Crowley. At the start of this compulsive gothic horror story, Arthur and his beautiful, innocent fiancée Margaret look forward to an idyllic life together, until they encounter the mesmerising and repulsive Oliver Haddo...

Critic Reviews:

You will acknowledge Maugham as the Master (New Statesman)

"[Maugham is] a great artist . . . a genius." (Theodore Dreiser)

Members Reviews:

A wonderful narrator David Rintoul

I don't know why there are no either reviews or ratings, the David Rintoul's performance is just great. I have been fully involved into the story with his voice and performance, and while listening to the book, especially last chapters, I was not able to do any routines (as I usually do) but staring in front of me and eagerly waiting for the next word. As I am an English language learner, I had bought a hard copy of the novel to accompany, but have not even opened the book, so understandable and perfect the David's narration is.

Great narration, beautiful language

I was immediately hooked- partly because of the descriptive prose and partly because of the wonderful narration. David Rintoul's narration was so beautiful that I could have listened to the whole book just to hear him speak. He certainly did justice to the grandiose language and tone of the book.

The plot, though not boring, was not as solid as it could have been. The idea behind the story is brilliant and went on quite well until the last part of the book. The climax fell flat and was a total let down. That still did not diminish the curiosity the story arouses and the beauty of the narration.

Now I am going to look for other books narrated by David Rintoul.

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Title: The Lost Father

Author: Mona Simpson

Narrator: Kate Rudd

Format: Unabridged

Length: 22 hrs and 41 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-19-12

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

"All you have to do to become somebodys God is disappear." The speaker is Mayan Atassi, the wise and frighteningly vulnerable heroine who captivated readers of Mona Simpsons Anywhere But Here and who now narrates the novels immensely powerful successor. Mayans god is her father, who left her when she was a child. Up until now she has worshiped him by waiting for him to come back. But at the age of 28 Mayan sets out to find him. Her quest is an epic, wrenching search that leads her across two continents to the high edge of madness. It leads the reader to a poignant understanding of the nature of love and lovelessness, fathers and fatherlessness, and of the loyalties that make us who we are - even when they threaten to destroy us.

Critic Reviews:

"Phenomenalbrilliant, astonishing, and wholly originalSimpson [has] created a marvel." (Newsweek)

"A breathtaking piece of fiction; Simpson is a writer who can break our heart and mend it in the same sentence." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

"Intimate in scaleprofound in implicationdazzlingan essence of family life has been distilled; it is a heady perfumeand enriching experience." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Members Reviews:

Not as good as ANYWHERE BUT HERE

So wanted to like this one after enjoying ANYWHERE BUT HERE, but I stopped listening after about 2 hours. Just couldn't get into it.

BTW, did you know Mona Simpson is the sister of Steve Jobs?