Listen to New Releases Audiobooks in Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

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Title: All the Rage

Subtitle: Stories

Author: A. L. Kennedy

Narrator: Simon Vance, Heather Wilds

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-29-14

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

A. L. Kennedy's riveting new story collection is a luscious feast of language that encompasses real estate and forlorn pets, adolescents and 60-somethings, weekly liaisons and obsessive affairs, "certain types of threat and the odder edges of sweet things". The women and men in these 12 stories search for love, solace, and a clear glimpse of what their lives have become. Anything can set them off thinking - the sad homogeneity of hotel breakfasts, a sex shop operated under Canadian values (whatever those are), or an army of joggers dressed as Santa.

With her boundless empathy and gift for the perfect phrase, Kennedy makes us care about each of her characters. In "Takes You Home", a man's attempt to sell his flat becomes a journey to the interior, by turns comic and harrowing. And "Late in Life" deftly evokes an intergenerational love affair free of the usual clichés, the younger partner asking the older, "What should I wear at your funeral?"

Alive with memory, humor, and longing, All the Rage is A. L. Kennedy at her inimitable best.

Members Reviews:

Not for me.

To be honest, I really hated these stories. The reviews were so inviting that I sent for the book, only to find that I felt no affinity for any of the characters, their language, their emotions, or anything. A while after I put the book down, I thought I'd try again. after all, the author is so highly considered by so many impressive reviewers. And she is so widely published. I still found the stories unreadable. Something wrong with me? Maybe. But I read a great deal and have lists of authors whose work I adore and whose books I buy. So, sorry.

Four Stars

The stories are difficult but fascinating, full of hidden clues, and need more than one reading.

Five Stars

great book

Monument to lust, heartbreak and loss

Here are twelve short stories whose primary theme is love. But that large, pristine, smooth block of marble known as love, is, in the authorâs hands, chiselled into monuments to lust, heartbreak and loss. Scattered around these monuments are small chunks of hope and humour that have been allowed to remain intact and which the reader stumbles over every so often as they look up at misery sculpted large.

The writing style is staccato like and too often obtuse and dense. There is a stream of consciousness that permeates most of the stories with internal dialogues that at times feel like their pushing the reader away with their repetitive, minimalistic style of narrative.

âAnd meanwhile you, thereâs you and you were, you really, you absolutely â I absolutely â in all of the ways I would like to â in all the ways I would like

But I

But I

But I

But I

Phone would be better.â

From, 'A Thing unheard of'.

But this repetitive, minimalistic style though at times distancing is honest. Peopleâs external and internal dialogues are full of repetitious phrases and words that are used to make a point, or to make sure a word or phrase was heard by those listening. We look to validate a point and/or our place in our discussion group by repeating words and phrases. We repeat words or phrases in our internal dialogue so that when we have to repeat them out loud they will hopefully make sense.

There are moments of laugh out loud humour.

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Title: Incendiary Girls

Subtitle: Stories

Author: Kodi Scheer

Narrator: Kodi Scheer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-08-14

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

Incendiary Girls explores our baser instincts with vivid imagination and humor. In these stories, our bodies become strange and unfamiliar terrain, a medium for transformation. In "Fundamental Laws of Nature", a doctor considers her legacy, both good and bad, when she discovers that her mother has been reincarnated as a thoroughbred mare. In the title story, a mischievous angel chronicles the remarkable life of a girl just beyond deaths reach.

In "Scheers Hands", empathy and attachment are illuminated by the absurdity of life. When our bodies betray us, when we begin to feel our minds slip, how much can we embrace without going insane? How much can we detach ourselves before losing our humanity? Scheers stories grapple with these questions in each throbbing, choking, heartbreaking moment.

Members Reviews:

Unlike Anything I've Read Before

Kodi Scheerâs Incendiary Girls is a haunting debut for an up-and-coming young writer. Having never heard of Scheer before this, I was hesitant when I first began reading the many short stories in this small collection. A few stories in, it was obvious to me that Kodi Scheer has raw talent, where her stories challenge many of the views that Iâve held previous to reading her collection.

Kodi Scheerâs collection has a large variety of stories that differ heavily in plot and content. My personal favorite, Gross Anatomy, tells the story of a young college student who has a cadaver follow her around. The role of the cadaver and what is going on in the head of the man character is yours to interpret, but by the end of the story you will have developed a sense of care for the two main characters. Probably the most memorable story of the bunch is called Miss Universe. This story is only three pages long but what happens in the story will always be in the back of your mind.

Scheerâs stories are unlike anything I have read before. They are, at times, quite humorous, haunting, sad, and dark. Scheerâs stories grab you by the heart and force you to care for characters that you havenât been able to feel for before. Scheerâs characters are really the true beauty of her stories: you will come to adore a cadaver, care for a druggy nurse, and feel bad for a woman who seems to find her husbandâs body parts around the house. Kodi Scheerâs debut is hauntingly dark and frankly, she is here to stay.

Exceptional Debut

This excellent collection of short stories by debut author Kodi Scheer is one of the most memorable books I've read in a long time. Though the tales concern themselves with many different types of people--overworked medical students, young parents, lovers from different backgrounds, transplant patients, pageant hopefuls, military wives--they are drawn together by sharply observed moments of pathos and humor. Scheer's protagonists face real and familiar problems but do so through the lens of the fantastic: one woman, afraid she is losing her elderly mother, is haunted by a cadaver she is dissecting in class. Another discovers that her partner has become a camel.

This collection explores the fears and wonders of our inner lives by presenting us with conflicts of the physical body, and does so in such fresh and unexpected language that I found myself unable to put the book down.

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Title: Pushover

Author: Roger Granelli

Narrator: Paul Hodgson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 39 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-27-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

A gritty, uncompromising new story from Welsh crime writer Roger Granelli.

Elkins arrived in Cardiff in 1946, a refugee from the Holocaust. Now an old man, he's weighed down with a survivor's guilt, haunted by his memories.

Kev and Dean are football hooligans, drunk on cheap lager and easy violence. The season is nearly over, and they need a way to fund their summer. A chance encounter causes these three lives to come crashing together one fateful night.

Members Reviews:

"If the Holocaust could not encourage permanent change he doubted that anything ever would."

Elkin lives carefully in his basement flat in Wales, still prisoner in many ways to his time in Auschwitz. His interior life is portrayed in sharp contrast to the violent Kev who looks for the "fertile breeding ground for the violence he liked to provide." With careful observation, Granelli does not tip the judgment within his own prose. The actions of the elderly Jewish survivor and the those of the street punks are revealed with stunning simplicity. This is a short story that is long on delivery and thought.

Very Good to Read

This is a story that can happen in real life. I enjoy reading books with a theme where gangsters play a part.

A gem of a story

I downloaded this Amazon Single in the UK, having also read Under The Wide Palermo Sky by this author. It's a short but very effective piece of writing, contrasting the tortured, lonely life of Elkins, a Holocaust survivor, with the rough working class life of his present environment, and it has a great twist at the end. Granelli writes very well, with clear, concise and involving prose, and Pushover had a great effect on me. As another reviewer has said, a lot of thought has gone into this, and the simplicity of the writing is very deceptive. Checking out Granelli's book page on Amazon he seems to be a writer with a very wide range, which might explain why he isn't very well known. In my opinions writers are pidgeon-holed these days but I don't think this writer can be. Pushover is a gem of a story which does not deserve to go under the radar

Wish it was longer!

I wish the story had been longer. It seems like it would have been a great story. Keep up the good work

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Title: Beyond the Wall of Sleep

Subtitle: Complete Works

Author: H. P. Lovecraft

Narrator: Mike Vendetti

Format: Unabridged

Length: 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-07-14

Publisher: Spoken Realms

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

In this short story by H.P. Lovecraft, an atheist, I believe he is exploring the possibility of the soul, albeit the soul of a lesser human, he was also a racist. You be the judge, this is a very thought-provoking short story by one of the masters of science fiction.

Members Reviews:

Be Careful: A Note About the Other Reviews

This product is NOT the collection of stories and poetry referenced in the other reviews - it is merely a copy of the short story of the same name. The hardcover and leather-bound versions listed on Amazon are a completely different product altogether.

This story, in and of itself, is not bad, but there are collections of Lovecraft's works available for Kindle that contain Beyond the Wall of Sleep and many more that would be better suited for someone looking to pick up a good Kindle version of his work - and certainly more reasonably priced that a dollar for a single short story.

This is a great buy and definitely worth the price:H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Collection

the gothic and the fantastic, a man who lived his short life as ...

Author of the horrific, the Gothic and the fantastic, a man who lived his short life as a recluse in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island until his premature death at age 47, âBeyond the Wall of Sleepâ is H. P. Lovecraftâs (1890-1939) classic tale of a reality less visible than our everyday material world. A quote from the opening paragraph: âWe may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.â With this statement from our narrator, a young intern at a mental hospital in the state of New York during the winter of 1900, we hear echoes of the shamanic worldview of many indigenous tribespeople and, more specifically, the dreamtime of the Australian Aborigines, that is, how the world of dreams is more enduring, more intense, more meaningful and, in terms of our vital spiritual life, more real than the ordinary world perceived by our senses.

.

However, this general philosophic reflection only sets the stage for the taleâs unfolding; specifically, how a 40-year old mountaineer from the rustic, wild Catskill Mountains by the name of Joe Slater is brought to the mental hospital after he brutally murdered a neighbor in a fit of insane rage. Then, once at the hospital, Joe has his first episode of supercharged frenzy requiring four orderlies and a straitjacket. The narrator relates, âSlater raved for up to fifteen minutes, babbling in his backwoods dialect of great edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked him.â Since Joe Slater could neither read nor write, nor was he ever acquainted with legends or fairy tales, the doctors remained baffled as to the basis or root cause of Joeâs visions, concluding the source to be nothing more definite than âabnormal dreams.â

Letâs pause here and explore an alternate explanation developed by psychiatrist Carl Jung.

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Title: Stochasti-City

Subtitle: A METAtropolis Story

Author: Tobias S. Buckell

Narrator: Scott Brick

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-30-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

OK, Reg. Youre a bouncer whos barely eking out a meager existence in the decaying Wilds outside Detroit. So a little job tracking the Eddies on their patrols seems like easy money. Well, think again, Reg. Because a riots about to happen and youre going to be the cause

This story was originally published in the Hugo Award-nominated METAtropolis.

Members Reviews:

Clever and compelling.

This was a hell of a lot of fun. The near future world feels like something organically grown from now, feels like a real (sometimes awful) place.

The writing really works, especially in regards to characterization and I chewed down the whole thing in one morning.

I was really happy to see there were two more of these stories on Amazon too so that's a bonus as my only real criticism was that there wasn't more of it.

Insightful and entertaining

I read this years ago in one of the Metatropolis collections and enjoyed it while thinking that it was a pessimistic view for the future. Reading it again and in light of intervening years has made it feel depressingly insightful - consistent with conflicting viewpoints in the United States.

Enjoyable story on top of that with an ambitious payoff. Have to wonder if such organization for large projects will actually come to pass.

A sharp, vivid piece of writing

First class work from a great author. Always happy to read more from Mr Buckell.

A too realistic view of our near future that shows ...

A too realistic view of our near future that shows us in an entertaining way what things we need to get working on or else.

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Title: Remembrances, Stories of Hospice and Home Care., Vol 1

Author: Bruce Allen

Narrator: Bruce Allen

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-10-14

Publisher: Bruce Allen

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

For decades Bruce Allen has been telling stories in hospice and home care, bringing smiles to people approaching their sunsets. So listen as Janette sings again and how Madge shows true courage. These special stories have helped many people hold hands, smile and find comfort.

Critic Reviews:

"I am convinced that this form of story telling history is one of the finest." (Lutheran History Center)

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Title: Remembrances, Stories of Hospice and Home Care, Vol 2

Author: Bruce Allen

Narrator: Bruce Allen

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 01-10-14

Publisher: Bruce Allen

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

More warm and wonderful stories of hospice and home care from Bruce Allen, the Button End Storyteller. Listen and laugh as Stan finds his own path, and smile as Paul finally reaches the garden. These special stories offer comfort for those who need a hand to hold.

Critic Reviews:

"One of Mr. Allens gifts he shares with our patients is imaginative story telling." (Hospice of San Francisco)

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Title: Don't Be Afraid

Subtitle: 13 Urban Legends Retold

Author: Jesse Kimmel-Freeman

Narrator: Don Kline

Format: Unabridged

Length: 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-08-14

Publisher: Skypirate Productions

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

Experience 13 common urban legends like never before. Expanded and retold in a way to really connect you to the story - are you brave enough to read them?

Members Reviews:

horror fan

If your a fan of horror you will love this but no no no no

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Title: Silence and the Word

Author: Mary Anne Mohanraj

Narrator: Deepti Gupta

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-31-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

A collection drawing from the many areas of Mary Anne Mohanraj's work, Silence and the Word includes everything from enticing erotica to Sri Lankan-American immigrant tales, from romantic poetry to provocative essays, like Esthely Blue (a magical-realist semi-autobiographical story of sex, work, and disappearing body parts), At the Gates of the City (a Mormon ghost story), and the award-winning story A Gentle Man (an affecting tale of an immigrant fathers attempt to reconcile his own yearning for home with his childrens individual needs and desires). Mohanraj boldly explores sexuality, ethnicity, and their interactions with the human heart.

Members Reviews:

The reader - a woman - has a beautiful voice with perfect pronunciation which has a nice effect with erotic passages.

A mix of erotic (classy, not down-and-dirty) and literary and science fiction themes. The reader does a great job with stories in the feminine voice of the author. "Johnny's Story", from an American male perspective doesn't work with this cultured feminine voice.

Great writing

I'm not critiquing the literary value -- although it's clearly high. I just enjoy her thoroughly accessible, mature and pleasing writing style.

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Title: A Date to Die For

Subtitle: #1, Speed Dating

Author: Bonnie R. Paulson

Narrator: Roxana Bell

Format: Unabridged

Length: 59 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-18-13

Publisher: Bonnie R Paulson

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies

Publisher's Summary:

Think TV - this is an episode, to be followed closely by the next.This is not a complete story and will not be resolved until Adventure #7!

When dating ends in deaths and threats, Molly might be better off staying single.

During one of Molly's weekly meet-ups with her girls at their regular bar, Molly succumbs to the duress of her two best friends and begins the aggressive dating they sign her up for online where the pairings are questionable...and dangerous.

They've entered her in an evening of speed dating. But at the end of the evening she finds an item from her past that raises questions...and danger.

When the number of deaths surpass Molly's goodnight kisses, her past pushes into the present and Molly loses much more than she gains. A stalker has focused on Molly and refuses to let anyone else date her. But she refuses to be single for the rest of her life.

Is Molly doomed to a life of singledom wrapped in fear - or will the stalker turn on her next?

Members Reviews:

Creepy Stalker seriel

"A Date to Die For: #1 Why Me?" is the first book in the series and sets us up for the whole series. We get to meet Molly and her besties as they have there weekly night out at their fave hot spot. Molly has a thing for the hottie bartender but he never takes her up on any of her advances. Her friends decide after a such a long dry spell she needs to meet someone so they all sign up for speed dating. After meeting a lot of duds instead of studs she finds a flattened penny on the table under a napkin, the exact thing her twin had given her and their friends before she was murdered a year ago. Freaking out she goes home and crashes. And things just get creepier from there!!!!

This is a short installment that leaves you wanting so much more!! It's also written in a way that you get the feeling that you're the one being stalked and not Molly. I had goosebumps!

Find a penny, pick it up.....it might not be good luck!

I bought the Complete Experience, with all of the volumes of this storyline in one set because I like the convenience of having the entire set in one book. I love being able to have the option of having all the books in one place, makes it much easier figuring out which book comes next and I don't have to go searching thru all the books in my Kindle to find the next one.

This story was a little creepy for me, and I loved that!! You find out from the beginning that Molly's identical twin sister had been murdered and now she believes she is being stalked by the same guy that had murdered her sister. The character building is solid. World building is solid. Bonnie writes in a style that flows easily, makes for an easy to follow story line when the story line starts to get a little twisted, because the killed is really, really twisted. Also, she knows how to build the suspense - you suspect EVERYONE and also wonder if possibly Molly might be imagining things at the very beginning. That is just the beginning - soon it is very clear she is not crazy.

Recommend for a fun, suspenseful read. The characters are 100% relatable, Molly's friends are people I would want to hang with. The terror that Molly feels and her reactions.......I could FEEL them and see a similar reaction from myself in the same situation. Molly herself is a fun, quirky person that is put thru more crap than anyone should ever have to be.