How To Get Audiobooks in Fiction, Contemporary Top Rated

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Title: Blackout

Author: Tom Barber

Narrator: John Sackville

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-13-15

Publisher: Cherry Hill Publishing, LLC

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 34 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Young counterterrorist cop Sam Archer arrives for work at the Armed Response Unit expecting a quiet day. But unbeknownst to him, a storm is coming. Three men have already been killed that morning. One committed suicide by the River Thames. Another was strangled in his car in Washington, DC. And the third was shot in the face in his high-rise New York apartment as he slept. The deaths seem random, thousands of miles apart. But they are all connected - by a shocking event 15 years ago. And this is only the beginning.

Archer, Chalky, and the rest of the unit suddenly find themselves plunged into a ferocious and violent confrontation, fighting for their lives. The enemy they are up against are brutal, highly trained, well armed, and anonymous. No one knows where they have come from. No one seems to know who they are. But they have a vendetta. They will never forgive or forget or show mercy. And for some reason, they're hell-bent on killing 10 specific people before the end of the day. As the Unit tries to find out who these killers are and locate the remaining targets so they can protect them, it becomes a race against time to see who can get there first. As the counterterrorist unit and the vengeful enemy come up against each other all over the city, Archer and the team soon realize two things: This enemy is more proficient and deadly than any they've ever encountered, and one of their own ARU men is on the extermination list.

Members Reviews:

Good story, but narration had some flaws.

Good story that I really enjoyed! There was several sentences in the story that the narrator mistakenly repeated.

Great read, full of action & suspense!!

This book really delivers...action, suspense, great characters & settings, whew!! This is my second of this series, and both were so good, I can't wait to read more! I did read them it of order, didn't matter, they each were great on their own.

awesome,, full of action

"This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBoom dot com." grabbed me from the first page.. fast paced thriller for true action fans...

First time reader

This is the first book I have read of Tom Barbers. Not realising this was book 3. I am always on look out for new authors and was not disappointed. It was easy to read, flowed well. Gritty characters, fast paced at times, with a hint of romance. I look forward to reading book 1 and 2.... And maybe more! Well worth a read!

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Title: Satin Island

Author: Tom McCarthy

Narrator: James Garnon

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-24-15

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks (UK)

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, 2015

Meet U. - a talented and uneasy figure currently pimping his skills to an elite consultancy in contemporary London. His employers advise everyone from big businesses to governments, and, to this end, expect their 'corporate anthropologist' to help decode and manipulate the world around them - all the more so now that a giant, epoch-defining project is in the offing.

Instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions, zombie parades.

Is there, U. wonders, a secret logic holding all these images together - a codex that, once cracked, will unlock the master meaning of our age? Might it have something to do with South Pacific cargo cults or the dead parachutists in the news? Perhaps; perhaps not.

As U. oscillates between the visionary and the vague, brilliance and bullshit, Satin Island emerges, an impassioned and exquisite novel for our disjointed times.

Members Reviews:

I really thought this was it...

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

Let me start by saying that the writing of Tom McCarthy is addictively enjoyable to read.

So much so that, after devouring his first chapter in a Terminal bookstore, I bought the audiobook for my flight with reckless anticipation.

McCarthy is clearly a brilliant and wonderfully tuned writer, but if the publishers summary promised a book the oscillated between 'brilliance & bullshit', I felt it too often flickered between brilliance & navel-gazing. For me, 'bullshit' (perhaps a hint of real DBC Pierre madness) might have filled the void, so my excitement fizzled to an irritation.

Ok, yes, I'm a little pissed the (parachutist) sub-narrative failed to ignite, (and of this, I was fore-warned) but I make no apology for offering my attention for a little narrative reward.

Don't be misled by one opiniondecide for your self but I came away feeling this book was the published study for a future great novel.

Would you ever listen to anything by Tom McCarthy again?

Yes. Addiction is not a casual reference.

What does James Garnon bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

Brilliant performance.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Satin Island?

I have been cruel enough alreadyand I'm not worthy of directing this artist.

Any additional comments?

I genuinely expect great things...

the worst narrator I ever encountered.

What would have made Satin Island better?

Different narrator. He stop mid-sentence, emphasises random sounds, and genuinely struggles with words that have more than three syllables. I have over 200 audiobooks, but this is the first one I encountered where narrator actually COULD NOT READ. Even authors, who are obviously not trained professionals, read out their books much more professionally than this man. I am returning this book.

How could the performance have been better?

This narrator should be banned. It was like listening to recorded speaking exercises of someone who is working on their stuttering problem.

"Intoxicated by his own verbosity".

Huge disappointment! Kept going - It had to be going somewhere? How wrong I was!

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Title: The Incarnations

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Susan Barker

Narrator: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-18-15

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 151 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Hailed as "China's Midnight's Children" (The Independent), this "brilliant, mind-expanding, and wildly original novel" (Chris Cleave) is about a Beijing taxi driver whose past incarnations over 1,000 years haunt him through searing letters sent by his mysterious soul mate.

Who are you? You must be wondering. I am your soul mate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of 16 million in search of you.

So begins the first letter that falls into Wang's lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang's previous lives - from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution - bound to his mysterious "soul mate," spanning 1,000 years of betrayal and intrigue.

As the letters continue to appear seemingly out of thin air, Wang becomes convinced that someone is watching him - someone who claims to have known him for over 1,000 years. And with each letter, Wang feels the watcher growing closer and closer....

Seamlessly weaving Chinese folklore, history, and literary classics, The Incarnations is a taut and gripping novel that sheds light on the cyclical nature of history as it hints that the past is never truly settled.

Members Reviews:

What was that you said?

This was one of those audiobooks that I might have enjoyed more if I had not been so annoyed by the narration. The parts read by the woman narrator were fine, but the man's quasi-robotic delivery and bizarre mispronunciation of simple, common words kept throwing me out of the story. He would also stress the wrong word in some sentences, leading to the occasionally hilarious unintended meaning.

Great, complex story, marred by horrible narration

So I'll be making sure to separate my thoughts of the actual book from the narration that it received via audio book. The book was narrated by two people. One was good, the other was horrible. The male narrator dictated everything, even emotions. Dialogue sounded comically robotic. "What. Do. You. Mean?" No emotion, inflection or tone to any of the characters that he portrayed. They all sounded like they were read from a script. Well..they technically were read from a script, but that shouldn't sound like it!

Anyway, despite this one narrators hack job, this book really satiated my love of loopy, cyclical plots. The ending really ties that knot together. In fact throughout the beginning of the novel, things seem very disjointed, unrelated, and happenstance. I was a bit worried that it wouldn't "close the loop" properly as I was expecting even. Even the tales of the incarnations bothered me a bit, which I'll explain later.

The book opens from the perspective of a Taxi driver, Wong, who seems to be a middle aged, down on his life, married Chinese fellow. His life isn't horrible, but underneath the surface, he just seems unhappy. We are given details of Wong's past, piecemeal. His own backstory come into sharper focus as the story progresses, and is masterfully interwoven with letters that he receives. So we get an effect that is allowing us to dig deeper into Wong's complicated past and those around him.

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Title: Infinite Home

Author: Kathleen Alcott

Narrator: Christa Lewis

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-04-15

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 46 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

A beautifully wrought story of an ad hoc family and the crisis they must overcome together.

Edith is a widowed landlady who rents apartments in her Brooklyn brownstone to an unlikely collection of humans, all deeply in need of shelter. Crippled in various ways - in spirit, in mind, in body, in heart - the renters struggle to navigate daily existence and soon come to realize that Edith's deteriorating mind and the menacing presence of her estranged, unscrupulous son, Owen, are the greatest challenges they must confront together.

Faced with eviction by Owen and his designs on the building, the tenants - Paulie, an unusually disabled man, and his burdened sister, Claudia; Edward, a misanthropic stand-up comic; Adeleine, a beautiful agoraphobe; and Thomas, a young artist recovering from a stroke - must find in one another what the world has not yet offered or has taken from them: family, respite, security, worth, love.

The threat to their home scatters them far from where they've begun, to an ascetic commune in Northern California, the motel rooms of depressed middle America, and a stunning natural phenomenon in Tennessee, endangering their lives and their visions of themselves along the way.

With humanity, humor, grace, and striking prose, Kathleen Alcott portrays these unforgettable characters in their search for connection, for a life worth living, for home.

Members Reviews:

A literary feast

What made the experience of listening to Infinite Home the most enjoyable?

Christa Lewis' narration is superb.

What did you like best about this story?

The luscious figurative language and fascinating characters; all of the residents of the building are intricately drawn.

What does Christa Lewis bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

Christa Lewis' narration was a perfect fit for the book. Her smooth delivery takes you through descriptions and inner lives of the characters with a fluidity that allows the listener to savor the story.

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

Yes.

Any additional comments?

I will be listening to other books by both the author and the narrator.

Infinitely Tedious

What would have made Infinite Home better?

More believable, likeable characters.

What could Kathleen Alcott have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Shorten it.

How could the performance have been better?

Not a big problem with the performance--just felt as if the story droned on and on.

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

Her written language is beautiful. It was the story and characters that were so tedious.

unrealistic relationships w/ some redeeming parts

i liked this story and i didn't. i think the idea of it was really sweet -- but the reality of it maybe wasn't all that successful?

the characters were interesting...however unbelievable it is to think that these people would interact with each other in any personal and intimate way just because they lived in the same apartment building.

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Titre: Les années

Auteur: Annie Ernaux

Narrateur: Marina Moncade

Format: Unabridged

Durée: 6 hrs and 41 mins

Langue: Français

Date de publication: 07-22-15

Éditeur: Gallimard

Evaluation: 5 sur 5 sur 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Résumé de l'éditeur:

Au travers de photos et de souvenirs laissés par les événements, les mots et les choses, Annie Ernaux nous fait ressentir le passage des années, de l'après-guerre à aujourd'hui. En même temps, elle inscrit l'existence dans une forme nouvelle d'autobiographie, impersonnelle et collective.

Marina Moncade est la voix sensible et délicate d'Annie Ernaux qui regarde en elle-même pour retrouver le monde, la mémoire et l'imaginaire des jours passés.

©2008 Éditions Gallimard (P)2015 Éditions Gallimard

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Title: Small Mercies

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Eddie Joyce

Narrator: Scott Aiello

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-10-15

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 60 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

A startling and tender portrait of one family's struggle to make peace with their son's death.

An ingeniously layered narrative told over the course of one week, Eddie Joyce's debut novel masterfully depicts an Italian-Irish American family on Staten Island and their complicated emotional history. Ten years after the loss of Bobby - the Amendola family's youngest son - everyone is still struggling to recover from the firefighter's unexpected death. Bobby's mother, Gail; his widow, Tina; his older brothers, Peter, the corporate lawyer, and Franky, the misfit; and his father, Michael, have all dealt with their grief in different ways. But as the family gathers together for Bobby Jr.'s birthday party, they must each find a way to accept a new man in Tina's life while reconciling their feelings for their lost loved one.

Presented through multiple points of view, Small Mercies explores the conflicts and deep attachments that exist within families. Heart-wrenching and profoundly relatable, Joyce's debut is a love letter to Staten Island and a deeply affecting portrait of an American family.

Critic Reviews:

"In Scott Aiello's rich and devastating performance you can hear how different Bobby's widow is from her new Manhattan beau; it's in their accents. Here are voices from all walks of New York City life.... Both novel and performance are full of craft and heart in this outstanding production." (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

Poignant Story and Tremendous Writing

Where does Small Mercies rank among all the audiobooks youve listened to so far?

Small Mercies is one of the top few books I've listened to on Audible and one of the first about which I've been moved to write a review. The ability of the author to pull you into the day to day family life of the Amendolas is really special.

What other book might you compare Small Mercies to and why?

The Art of Fielding comes to mind for two reasons. First, there is a backdrop of sports, but it definitely isn't a sports novel. Second, it is character driven and you really get to know the people in the book.

Which scene was your favorite?

There is an early scene in the book where older brother Peter is being informed that he's being "worked out" of his law firm's partnership. The scene is so realistic in terms of the characters present, the thoughts in Peter's mind and the conversation.

Any additional comments?

I'd encourage you to take a trip with the Amendolas and get to know them. It's a lovely journey.

Couldn't stop listening!

I devoured this book, and now I'm sad that it's over. I miss the Amendola family already. This book is a beautifully drawn and realistic portrait of a family and its reaction to a great loss. At times I laughed, at others I cried. I highly recommend it, and I hope EddIe Joyce continues to produce novels. My best listen in quite some time.

A wonderful slice of middle class life on Staten Island.

Wonderful characterizations and spot on narration combine to make an outstanding listen. . I loved this book.

New York!

This story takes place in NYC.

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Titre: Le vieux qui lisait des romans d'amour

Auteur: Luis Sepulveda

Narrateur: Féodor Atkine

Format: Unabridged

Durée: 3 hrs and 20 mins

Langue: Français

Date de publication: 12-03-14

Éditeur: Audiolib

Evaluation: 5 sur 5 sur 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Résumé de l'éditeur:

Antonio José Bolivar Proaño est le seul à pouvoir chasser le félin tueur d'hommes. Il connaît la forêt amazonienne, il respecte les animaux qui la peuplent, il a vécu avec les Indiens Shuars et il accepte le duel avec le fauve. Mais Antonio José Bolivar a découvert sur le tard l'antidote au redoutable venin de la vieillesse : il sait lire, et il a une passion pour les romans qui parlent de l'amour, le vrai, celui qui fait souffrir. Partagé entre la chasse et sa passion pour les romans, le vieux nous entraîne dans ce livre plein de charme dont le souvenir ne nous quitte plus.

©1988 Titre original : "Un viejo que leía novelas de amor", Luis Sepúlveda / Éditions Métailié (P)2014 Audiolib

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Title: Vital Sign

Author: J.L. Mac

Narrator: Genvieve Bevier

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-18-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

I used to have a great life. My little world was bright. I had no complaints. My perfectly simple life made the fall from grace that much more devastating. I plummeted from the heavenly little bubble that I shared with Jake. I fell fast and hard straight into the fiery pits of hell. The knowledge of how things used to be is a bittersweet torture that refuses me even one moment of respite. I live in a painful reverie that I cant escape. I had it good once. Thats gone now. All of it disappeared like vapor into the ether. I'm a lost woman, wandering through grief and struggling to come to terms with my new title: widow. My family says I need understanding and closure. I say a cigarette and a bottle of wine is a much better option for instant gratification. I'm the awkward, depressed one standing in the corner making everyone around me miserably uncomfortable. I'm the one with vacant eyes that society strives to help but can't. I'm the one who hands out tight smiles and derisive snorts. I'm the widow adrift in this world with no direction. No meaning. No hope. No vital sign.

Sadie sets out on a journey to healing without knowing that things will get far worse before they get better. Despite her general indifference to organ donation, she finds herself on a journey to seek out the only people who benefited from her husband's tragic death. Resentment runs rampant as she meets the thriving organ recipients. Anger and jealousy spiral, sending the delicate structure of Sadie's emotions into a tailspin. Alexander McBride got a second chance - one that he didnt necessarily want. Alexander is a game changer for Sadie. She hates him for his health but can't help feeling at home in his presence. He soothes her grief in a way that is intoxicating, addictive even. The heart that once fell in love with her now resides in Alexander McBride's chest. It's a circumstance that forces her to wage an internal war fueled by grief, anger, guilt, love, lust, and loyalty.

Members Reviews:

Heart wrenching, beautiful story

Sadie is married to the love of her life, Jake. Life couldn't be any better than what it is now, until everything she loves is ripped from her one tragic night. She is now a young widow, struggling to come to terms with her grief and time does not seem to be making any difference to her pain.

Two years after Jake's death, in an effort to move forward, Sadie decides to take the first step towards healing. Jake was an organ donor so Sadie reaches out to all of the organ recipients so she can meet the people who now have a piece of Jake in them. The last person she plans to meet was the man that has Jake's heart, Alexander McBride.

Alexander McBride comes across Sadie when she arranges to meet up with him on Tybee Island, where he lives a quiet life, far removed from the one he used to have. They end up crossing paths with each other without knowing who the other is. Sadie is very attracted to Xander (Alexander) and it is a very troubling feeling for her, it feels like she is cheating on her husband - just having lustful thoughts of another man.

Xander thinks she is the most beautiful woman he has met and is completely enamored by Sadie. After they realise who the other is, the bond between them becomes even stranger. As Sadie struggles to deal with all the new feelings and emotions she is having with Xander, he too is struggling with his own demons.

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Title: The Betrayers

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: David Bezmozgis

Narrator: Christopher Lane

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-23-14

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 42 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

A compact saga of love, duty, family, and sacrifice from a rising star whose fiction is "self-assured, elegant, perceptive . . . and unflinchingly honest" (New York Times)

These incandescent pages give us one fraught, momentous day in the life of Baruch Kotler, a Soviet Jewish dissident who now finds himself a disgraced Israeli politician. When he refuses to back down from a contrary but principled stand regarding the settlements in the West Bank, his political opponents expose his affair with a mistress decades his junior, and the besieged couple escapes to Yalta, the faded Crimean resort of Kotler's youth. There, shockingly, Kotler comes face-to-face with the former friend whose denunciation sent him to the Gulag almost 40 years earlier.

In a whirling 24 hours, Kotler must face the ultimate reckoning, both with those who have betrayed him and with those whom he has betrayed, including a teenage daughter, a son facing his own moral dilemma in the Israeli army, and the wife who once campaigned to secure his freedom and stood by him through so much.

Stubborn, wry, and self-knowing, Baruch Kotler is one of the great creations of contemporary fiction. An aging man grasping for a final passion, he is drawn inexorably into a crucible that is both personal and biblical in scope.

In prose that is elegant, sly, precise, and devastating in its awareness of the human heart, David Bezmozgis has rendered a story for the ages, an inquest into the nature of fate and consequence, love and forgiveness. The Betrayers is a high-wire act, a powerful tale of morality and sacrifice that will haunt readers long after they turn the final page.

Critic Reviews:

"In this taut, fierce, forensically insightful novel, David Bezmozgis explores the frictions between goodness and kindness, public and private virtue, forgiveness and forgetting. Compulsive and profound." (A. D. Miller, finalist for the Man Booker Award for Snowdrops)

"Scary good...Not a line or note in the book rings false." (Esquire)

Members Reviews:

Terrible ending...

It was like the author forgot to write seem ending. Not a huge fan of this book.

Brilliant novel by David Bezmozgis

I'm giving this audiobook five stars, but only because the system won't allow me to give it six. I'm not sure which was better: the captivating story that is at once character and plot driven, or the wonderful performance by the narrator that makes listening to this book almost a cinematic experience. This is a book group selection, by far my favorite in the past several years. Poignant, tragic, and yet also hilarious at times, this is a best seller for good reasons. Cannot recommend this book enough. And the narrator should win a Grammy.

Not Happy With The Betrayers

The narration was excellent, but I found the story hard to follow and uninteresting. It is about a Jew who betrayed another innocent Jew during the Holocaust who consequently went to prison for thirteen years. By accident they met thirty years later and recognized each other.

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Title: I, The Divine

Subtitle: A Novel in First Chapters

Author: Rabih Alameddine

Narrator: Mozhan Marno

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-18-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 13 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps. Through Osama, we also enter the world of the contemporary Lebanese men and women whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war, conflicted identity, and survival. With The Hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century.

Members Reviews:

As good a book as An Unnecssary Woman

If you could sum up I, The Divine in three words, what would they be?

I can't believe I waited more than a year to listen to I, the Divine, after listening to An Unnecessary Woman which was, in my opinion, informative and poignant and is now one of my favorite books, ever. Kudos to Alameddine and Marno.

What other book might you compare I, The Divine to and why?

Strangely enough, this books reminds me of Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows. Both have very appealing protagonists whose every word seems honest.

Which scene was your favorite?

I liked them all.

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

No.

Any additional comments?

Don't miss this book. Don't miss An Unnecessary Woman. Don't miss Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrow.