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Before She Met Me
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
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At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place before she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from the author of Flaubert’s Parrot.
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Until It's Over
- By: Nicci French
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Astrid Bell has known most of her roommates for years, but while they have a history together - romantic pairings, one-night stands, friendships - each of them also has a past. Astrid is on her way home one day when her neighbor knocks her off her bike. Seeing she is bruised but not broken, her roommates help her home. The next day, they learn that same neighbor was beaten to death hours later. Each of them tells the police what they know and are dismissed - until Astrid stumbles over another body.
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My First Nicci French Novel recommended Goodreads
- By Beverly on 12-18-11
By: Nicci French
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Dolphin Junction
- Stories
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: David Thorpe, Emma Powell, Gerard Doyle, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Now, for the first time, Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume. In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five stand-alone nerve-racking and thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.
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Wicked treats
- By A+A on 11-24-21
By: Mick Herron
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The Narrative Gimmick Works
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Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she's carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt.
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stunning beauty
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By: Penelope Lively
What listeners say about Before She Met Me
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- Peter Bassing
- 12-09-20
Not his best effort
While Barnes at his worst is better than most at their best this is not a great book. It would seem that having conjured a cute premise he dared himself to write a novel about it. He lost. The book has a number of amusing riffs but does not jell into a coherent whole or present believable characters.
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Overall
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- Mitzi
- 02-04-22
50% Pleasure, 50% Disappointment
The first part of the book is brilliant, engaging, irresistible: one doesn't want to put it down (or, rather, click "stop"). Then it starts to go in an unexpected direction that isn't consistent with the initial tone of the story. I am not afraid of twists and surprises in a novel: but the way this one ends clashes with what appeared to be the genre embraced at the start by the author. In view of this second part, the first might as well not have been there. Why tell us so lengthily about the first marriage if, later on, this doesn't mean anything to the development of the events and it doesn't help us know the main character particularly better?
Having said that, the writing itself--the use of language, the elegant description, and some genius one-liners or phrases--is amazing.
I am slowly buying everything read by Simon Vance. He is my favorite male reader on Audible. Absolutely fantastic.
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