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Capote's Women
- A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's summary
DON’T MISS FX’s FEUD: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS—THE ORIGINAL SERIES BASED ON THE BESTSELLING BOOK—COMING SOON!
New York Times bestselling author Laurence Leamer reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote's never-published final novel, Answered Prayers—the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote's ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his "swans."
“There are certain women,” Truman Capote wrote, “who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.” Barbara “Babe” Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy’s sister)—they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and startling way possible.
Bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958 and In Cold Blood in 1966, when Capote struggled with a crippling case of writer’s block. While enjoying all the fruits of his success, he was struck with an idea for what he was sure would be his most celebrated novel…one based on the remarkable, racy lives of his very, very rich friends.
For years, Capote attempted to write Answered Prayers, what he believed would have been his magnum opus. But when he eventually published a few chapters in Esquire, the thinly fictionalized lives (and scandals) of his closest female confidantes were laid bare for all to see, and he was banished from their high-society world forever. Laurence Leamer re-creates the lives of these fascinating swans, their friendships with Capote and one another, and the doomed quest to write what could have been one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
Critic reviews
One of NY Post’s 35 Best Book Gifts for Everyone on Your 2021 Holiday List
One of NY Post’s Must-Have Books for Fall 2021
One of Town & Country’s Must-Read Books of Fall
One of Wall Street Journal’s 12 Books to Read for October 2021
One of Garden & Gun's Favorite Books of 2021
One of PopSugar’s October Must-Reads
“Babe Paley, Slim Keith, C.Z. Guest...they were the stars of '50s and '60s society. They were also the women Truman Capote loved, flattered—and betrayed. A fascinating look at their world.”—People
"Laurence Leamer deftly tells the stories of the stylish, glamorous women whose trust Capote cultivated and then betrayed. Mr. Leamer has delivered a fast-paced, sensitive tale of the swans, their tumultuous lives and their dismay at Capote’s treachery.”—Wall Street Journal
“In this delicious dissection of the writer and the women he befriended, Laurence Leamer uncovers what it meant to let Capote into your inner circle, how each of these women found friendship and frustration with him, and what happened when he committed the ultimate betrayal.”—Town & Country
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Story
At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
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Capote’s coming of age story
- By Daniel Diffin on 11-08-23
By: Truman Capote
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In Cold Blood
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
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Still the Best
- By Lisa on 01-10-06
By: Truman Capote
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Mar-a-Lago
- Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace
- By: Laurence Leamer
- Narrated by: Todd McClaren
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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To know Donald J. Trump - to understand what makes the 45th president of the US tick - it is best to start in his natural habitat: Palm Beach, Florida. It is here he learned the techniques that took him all the way to the White House. Painstakingly, over decades, he has created a world in this exclusive tropical enclave and favorite haunt of billionaires where he is not just president but a king. The vehicle for his triumph is Mar-a-Lago, one of the greatest mansions ever built in the US.
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No surprises but would have liked more
- By B. Howard on 02-19-19
By: Laurence Leamer
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Hitchcock's Blondes
- The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director's Dark Obsession
- By: Laurence Leamer
- Narrated by: Sharmila Devar
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Alfred Hitchcock was fixated—not just on the dark, twisty stories that became his hallmark, but also by the blond actresses who starred in many of his iconic movies. The director of North by Northwest, Rear Window, and other classic films didn’t much care if they wore wigs, got their hair coloring out of a bottle, or were the rarest human specimen—a natural blonde—as long as they shone with a golden veneer on camera. The lengths he went to in order to showcase (and often manipulate) these women would become the stuff of movie legend.
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Probably Most Effective If You’ve Never Seen a Hitchcock Film
- By Robbie on 02-01-24
By: Laurence Leamer
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Michael C. Hall
- Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Golden Globe-winning actor Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) performs Truman Capote's masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbor, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly - a World War II-era society girl in her late teens - survives via socialization, attending parties and restaurants with men from the wealthy upper class who also provide her with money and expensive gifts. Over the course of the novella, the seemingly shallow Holly slowly opens up to the curious protagonist.
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"Better to look at the sky than live there"
- By W Perry Hall on 02-12-14
By: Truman Capote
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Tiny Terror
- Why Truman Capote (Almost) Wrote Answered Prayers
- By: William Todd Schultz
- Narrated by: Alex Hyde White
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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What has received little attention is Capote's last, unfinished book, Answered Prayers, a merciless skewering of cafe society and the high-class women Capote called his "swans." When excerpts appeared he was immediately blacklisted, ruined socially, labeled a pariah. Capote recoiled - disgraced, depressed, and all but friendless. In Tiny Terror Schultz sheds light on the life and works of Capote and answers the perplexing mystery - why did Capote write a book that would destroy him?
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Absolutely AWFUL psycho babble
- By wayne hollowell on 06-05-22
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Astor
- The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society. The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic.
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A family first made, then destroyed by wealth.
- By Barbara W. on 09-23-23
By: Anderson Cooper, and others
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Summer Crossing
- A Novel
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 3 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 2004, a trove of Truman Capote's abandoned papers went up for auction at Sotheby's. Included in the lot was the handwritten manuscript of Summer Crossing, a novel Capote began writing in 1943, and continued to tinker with on and off for a decade. Since the time of his death in 1984, Capote scholars and biographers had long believed this manuscript lost, never to be recovered. They were wrong.
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Summer doldrums
- By Marjorie on 02-11-06
By: Truman Capote
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The Early Stories of Truman Capote
- By: Truman Capote, Hilton Als - foreword
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Nancy Linari, Sarah Scott
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Recently rediscovered in the archives of the New York Public Library, these short stories provide an unparalleled look at Truman Capote writing in his teens and early twenties, before he penned such classics as Other Voices, Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and In Cold Blood. This collection of more than a dozen pieces showcases the young Capote developing the unique voice and sensibility that would make him one of the twentieth century’s most original writers.
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Stories From A Young Capote
- By Sara on 04-29-16
By: Truman Capote, and others
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The Grass Harp
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Cody Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Set on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits - an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies - who one day take up residence in a tree house. As they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, “that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.”
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Fake southern accent all wrong
- By small biz owner on 02-08-19
By: Truman Capote
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The Price of Justice
- A True Story of Greed and Corruption
- By: Laurence Leamer
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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This nonfiction legal thriller traces the 14-year struggle of two lawyers to bring the most powerful coal baron in American history to justice. Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy since the early 1990s, ran an industry that provides nearly half of America’s electric power. But wealth and influence weren’t enough for Blankenship and his company, as they set about destroying corporate and personal rivals, challenging the Constitution, purchasing the West Virginia judiciary, and willfully disregarding safety standards in the company’s mines - mines in which scores died unnecessarily.
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A good story
- By Mr. on 10-06-13
By: Laurence Leamer
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Yachts and Things
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Capote's previously lost and unpublished tale "Yachts and Things" was recently discovered by Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kasher in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. Written at the height of his career and socialite life, this short, thinly-veiled work of fiction tells the story of two friends about to take an "idyllic three-week cruise in the Mediterranean aboard a friend's chartered yacht".
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too short
- By Michael A on 09-19-16
By: Truman Capote
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The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters
- The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee
- By: Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A poignant, evocative, and wonderfully gossipy account of the two sisters who represented style and class above all else - Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill - from the authors of Furious Love. Drawing on the authors’ candid interviews with Lee Radziwill, The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters explores their complicated relationship, placing them at the center of 20th-century fashion, design, and style. This dual biography sheds light on the public and private lives of two extraordinary women who lived through immense tragedy in enormous glamour.
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Fascinating and Sad
- By Laura Ellis on 01-22-19
By: Sam Kashner, and others
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What listeners say about Capote's Women
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- MC in SC
- 08-29-22
Captivating
Although I certainly knew who Capote was and had read and seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I never knew about his swans. This book speaks to how sad and lonely these women and Capote’s lives were. If ever the expression “you can’t buy happiness” we’re true, this book solidifies this. It is definitely worth reading or listening to this book for a glimpse into the pathetic life of Truman Capote.
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2 people found this helpful
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- MI
- 03-06-23
Excellent
So much detail yet easy to follow thanks to a clear and enjoyable narrator performance.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 11-16-23
Loved it
Full of vibrant characters, this book at times felt further from the real world then many science fiction pieces. Yet an extremely engaging story about no ordinary people.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Earl Quinn Peeper
- 01-21-24
Riveting!
Magnificent writing and performance! Could hardly stop listening and often kept the car running in park!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Emily D
- 02-08-24
Excellent author and voice read. Not great editor.
Great book and great performance reading.
The editor really didn’t seem to do their job. The word “measure” in some form was used several times a page and sometimes multiple times in a paragraph. It was distracting throughout the entire book. Additionally the use of the word “transvest***” as a current term to describe a transgender person, and not quoting someone saying it from the past, should have been flagged by an editor for sure. I don’t put these flaws on Leamer. He did a great job researching, crafting and writing the story. The editor didn’t do their job smoothing out the edges.
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1 person found this helpful
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- ginatheartist
- 07-25-23
Out of order
I wish this had been year by year and not all over the place. I understand each swan had to have there history told but I just felt it jumped around too much and was confusing sometimes and repetitive.
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- MaineReader
- 02-25-24
Amazing reader! A+++
Juicy, delicious story of rich fabulous ladies behaving badly. Love! And Capote is one of my favorite authors. I loved learning more about him.
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- Caitlin E Sapaugh
- 02-22-24
Jackie did not divorce Ari
Shocked at Leamer’s basic blundering of facts. He states that Jackie divorced Ari and got a settlement. Untrue! Anyone with a basic knowledge of the Kennedy’s knows Onassis wanted to divorce her but they never actually divorced and he died in Paris as her husband and she got money after his death. She was widowed twice. I cannot fathom this oversight. I’m not sure whether to believe the basic life stories of Truman or his swans if he can get that part wrong. And no editor noticed!? Really really embarrassing.
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- Candice
- 03-19-24
Wonderful!
Well written and well spoke! I didn’t fast forward once! I felt as though I was right there in the moments and learned a ton!
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- jolie
- 10-21-21
VERY entertaining non fiction
Highly recommend this if you love non-fiction. About Truman Capote and his "Swans," socialites of the 50s and 60s. Full of glamor and cunning, these women climbed to the top of society--but many were ultimately unhappy once at the top. This parallels Capote's literary career. It was very entertaining--loved listening to it on auditable.
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13 people found this helpful