It’s the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.
Kay says:
"I Think I'm in Love"
With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.
“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued 13-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell.
Amanda says:
"Don't Do It..."
Thirteen-year-old Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, and dies of a marijuana overdose. The next thing she knows, she’s in Hell, sharing a cell with a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker in the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie.
Narrated By Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, and others
Overall
(19084)
Performance
(6106)
Story
(6088)
Why we think it’s a great listen: The most celebrated performance in all of Audible’s history, The Help has nearly 2,000 5-star reviews from your fellow listeners. We hear the print book’s not bad, either. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another.
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.
bonita says:
"It's finally here! Complete and uncut!"
Rayford Steele, his rag-tag team of flying rebels from around the globe, and his extended Tribulation Force would continue what Rayford called Operation Eagle. The Tribulation Force believed that Anti-christ and his minions were about to attack Israeli Christ-followers and that, when they fled, Rayford and his recruited fellow believers would serve as agents of rescue. Nicolae Carpathia, now the total embodiment of evil, desecrates the temple in Jerusalem by entering and declaring himself God.
Witty Wodehouses�s best-loved creation is the master-servant team of Bertie Wooster, the charming nitwit, and Jeeves, his effortlessly superior valet and protector. Newsweek says "they are at their best in The Code of the Woosters." Newsweek says "they are at their best in The Code of the Woosters."
A Terrible Tragedy. . . Brooke and Peter are struggling in their marriage when they are faced with the single worst moment ever. What was supposed to be a pool party for their two daughters and a handful of children ends in disaster. As three-year-old Hayley fights for her life, the Baxter family draws together, not even sure how to pray.
Author of many novels and short stories, best-selling writer Lee Smith has received numerous awards for her works, including two O. Henry Awards. Fair and Tender Ladies is an epistolary novel that traces the life of Ivy Rowe, born in the isolated Virginia mountain community of Sugar Fork.
America's most hilarious sportsman returns with this collection of insights about youth, the great outdoors, and the philosophy of fileting fish. When best-selling author Patrick McManus looks at a subject, you're sure to come away with an outrageously new perspective.
Gerald Dickens, great, great grandson of Charles Dickens, reads this traditional Christmas tale, in which Ebenezer Scrooge is taught the true meaning of Christmas by a series of ghostly visitors. Published in 1843, A Christmas Carol has become as much a part of Christmas as trees and stockings, plum pudding and mistletoe, enjoyed by children and adults alike. This audiobook includes a special feature, as family member Gerald Dickens recounts his understanding of this classic story.
The Cornish Foundation, set up with money left by the late art expert, collector, and notable eccentric Francis Cornish, must choose a worthy undertaking upon which to expend a portion of its considerable funds. It is decided that the Foundation will fund the doctoral work of one Hulda Schnakenburg: a grumpy, difficult, and extraordinarily talented music student.
In Neat, writer/performer Charlayne Woodard shares her memories of growing up black in America in the '60s and '70s. The play focuses around the life of Woodard's Aunt Beneatha, Neat, who was mistakenly fed camphor oil as a baby, resulting in permanent brain damage. Stories of family and of time spent with Neat are weaved together with touching results.
A Time to Embrace: A Story of Hope, Healing, and Abundant Life
UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 53 mins)
By Karen Kingsbury
Narrated By Melissa Hurst
Overall
(14)
Performance
(6)
Story
(6)
In this gripping sequel to A Time to Dance, John and Abby Reynolds are back together and feeling like newlyweds after 21 years of marriage. They’re convinced that together they can tackle anything, even the high school politics draining the joy from John’s coaching career. But in the blink of an eye, disaster strikes—a kind of tragedy John and Abby never anticipated.
From New York Times best-selling author Karen Kingsbury comes an unforgettable story of love struggling against all odds to snatch hope from the jaws of despair. Annie Warren’s concern for her adult son Josh has intensified ever since a drunk driver careened into him.
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.
bonita says:
"It's finally here! Complete and uncut!"
Narrated By Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance, and others
Overall
(4)
Performance
(3)
Story
(3)
The modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power.
Narrated By Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, and others
Overall
(19084)
Performance
(6106)
Story
(6088)
Why we think it’s a great listen: The most celebrated performance in all of Audible’s history, The Help has nearly 2,000 5-star reviews from your fellow listeners. We hear the print book’s not bad, either. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another.
Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect! Well, perfect except that the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree.
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than 20 years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: his 14-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.
The Civil War may be over but a new war has begun, one between the past and the present, tradition and technology. On a former marshy wasteland, the daring Massachusetts Institute of Technology is rising, its mission to harness science for the benefit of all and to open the doors of opportunity to everyone of merit. But in Boston Harbor a fiery cataclysm throws commerce into chaos, as ships’ instruments spin inexplicably out of control. Soon after, another mysterious catastrophe devastates the heart of the city.
Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she's had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic's doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes. Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat. Tess’s sailor also manages to survive unharmed, witness to Lady Duff Gordon’s questionable actions during the tragedy.
While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.
It’s the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.
The year is 1771. Claire Randall is still an outlander, out of place and out of time. But now she is linked by love to her only anchor: Jamie Fraser. They have crossed oceans and centuries to build a life together in North Carolina. But tensions, both ancient and recent, threaten members of their clan. Knowing that his wife has the gift of prophecy, James must believe Claire, though he would prefer not to. Claire has shared a dreadful truth: there will, without a doubt, be a war.
Why we think it’s a great listen: Some books are meant to be read; others are meant to be heard – Water for Elephants falls into the second group, and is one of the best examples we have of how a powerful performance enhances a great story. Nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski reflects back on his wild and wondrous days with a circus. It's the Depression Era and Jacob, finding himself parentless and penniless, joins the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
Sophie Apperly has spent her whole life pleasing others - but when she realises her family see her less as indispensable treasure and more as general dogsbody, she decides she's had enough. So when an old friend offers her the chance of a lifetime, she decides to swap Little England for the Big Apple, and heads off to the land of opportunity.
From the moment Sophie hits the bright lights of Manhattan she's determined to enjoy every minute of her big adventure.
.In a seedy bar in Hollywood, a whiskey-loving barman is drawn into the nocturnal world of his sociopathic clientele, with their squabbles, delusions, and bizarre acts of violence. In this brilliantly funny portrait of addiction and its consequences, escape offers the only chance of survival. Utterly absorbing and surprisingly tender, Ablutions is a startlingly bold and original debut.
When Jesse Bennett returned home from school one afternoon to a crowd on her front lawn, she knew that the inevitable had finally happened - her mother, who for years had warned the family she would end up in the local mental institution, made good on her promise by attempting suicide. When her mother went away to seek treatment, Jesse constructed an elaborate lie to tell her typically cruel classmates: Her mother was on a world cruise, a prize she won from the back of a cereal box.
Betrayed by his brother and his childhood love, Brice Kinross needs a fresh start. So he welcomes the opportunity to leave Sweden for the Scottish Highlands to take over the family estate. But there's trouble afoot. The estate is in ruin and money is disappearing. He discovers an ally in Marsaili Buchanan, the beautiful redheaded housekeeper, but can he trust her?
Narrated By Thomas Sadoski, Edward Herrman, Craig Wasson
Overall
(0)
Performance
(0)
Story
(0)
A Stephen King original short story featuring an excerpt from 11.22.63, his latest full-length novel. With the heart of Stand by Me and the genius horror of Christine, Mile 81 is Stephen King unleashing his imagination as he drives past one of those road signs.... At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded-up rest stop, a place where high-school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high-school kids have always gotten into....
Infamous playboy Tristan Romero meets ordinary Lily at a lavish ball and arrogantly predicts that she will wake up the following morning between his designer silk sheets! Powerless to resist this wicked billionaire, Lily knows Tristan is only offering one night. But then she discovers she's pregnant, and Tristan's aristocratic duty demands he take Lily as his bride. Lily's shame over accepting a loveless proposal is heightened when she realises that, as the Spaniard's wife, she'll be expected to fulfil his every need.
Vienna. 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, walks through the city to his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Bensimon. He is sitting anxiously in the waiting room when an extraordinary woman enters.... Moving from Vienna to London's West End, the battlefields of France, and hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish and mesmerising journey into the human psyche, and a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe.
When a brilliant young English doctor vanishes into the impenetrable forests of the northern Congo, intelligence chief Jack Milton sends a message to his godson, Luca Matthews, in the Himalayas, asking him to go to Africa and find Joshua. Reluctantly, Luca obeys; but he is no longer the man he once was. Meanwhile in Africa, brilliant pilot Beatrice (Bear) Makuru, also wants to brave the northern wilderness.
On 3 September, 1939, Amy Browning decided to start a diary. It was a momentous day for so many reasons: It was Amy's 18th birthday, her sister had just given birth, and on the radio it was announced that Great Britain was now at war. As the months went by, things began to change. The bombing started, and Amy's fears grew for her boyfriend, Ian, in the RAF....
The Civil War may be over but a new war has begun, one between the past and the present, tradition and technology. On a former marshy wasteland, the daring Massachusetts Institute of Technology is rising, its mission to harness science for the benefit of all and to open the doors of opportunity to everyone of merit. But in Boston Harbor a fiery cataclysm throws commerce into chaos, as ships’ instruments spin inexplicably out of control. Soon after, another mysterious catastrophe devastates the heart of the city.
New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini’s delightful Elm Creek Quilts series features strong women who face life head-on and chronicle their triumphs and tragedies in elaborate quilts. Here, listeners meet Rosa Diaz Barclay, a woman fighting for her family’s survival in Prohibition-era Southern California.
Mississippi plantation mistress Amanda Satterfield loses her daughter to cholera after her husband refuses to treat her for what he considers to be a “slave disease.” Insane with grief, Amanda takes a newborn slave child as her own and names her Granada, much to the outrage of her husband and the amusement of their white neighbors. Troubled by his wife’s disturbing mental state and concerned about a mysterious plague sweeping through his slave population, Master Satterfield purchases Polly Shine, a slave reputed to be a healer.