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Any Human Heart
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
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It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns. In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined.
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I was really waiting for this book!
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Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.
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Loved it and learned alot.
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Publisher's summary
Best-selling author William Boyd—the novelist who has been called a “master storyteller” (Chicago Tribune) and “a gutsy writer who is good company to keep” (Time)—here gives us his most entertaining, sly, and compelling novel to date. The novel evokes the tumult, events, and iconic faces of our time as it tells the story of Logan Mountstuart—writer, lover, and man of the world—through his intimate journals. It covers the “riotous and disorganized reality” of Mountstuart’s 85 years in all their extraordinary, tragic, and humorous aspects.
The journals begin with his boyhood in Montevideo, Uruguay, then move to Oxford in the 1920s and the publication of his first book, then on to Paris where he meets Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, et al., and to Spain, where he covers the civil war. During World War II, we see him as an agent for naval intelligence, becoming embroiled in a murder scandal that involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar years bring him to New York as an art dealer in the world of 1950s abstract expressionism, then on to West Africa, to London where he has a run-in with the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and, finally, to France where, in his old age, he acquires a measure of hard-won serenity.
This is a moving, ambitious, and richly conceived novel that summons up the heroics and follies of 20th-century life.
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
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The Immigrants
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a love story of great beauty and great tenderness, the kind of love story that entangles the listener in the lives of the characters, so that after the story is over, one continues to live with those characters. And fortunately, the listener will not have to say farewell to these characters, since it is the first in a series that will tell the story of three Californian families over the course of the 20th century.
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Narration style kills the story.
- By Glynis on 11-27-14
By: Howard Fast
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The Keys to the Street
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
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Mystery with humor and insight
- By Ida Hagman on 10-02-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.
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Extraordinary
- By Vieux Carré Blonde on 12-12-12
By: Evelyn Waugh
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Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
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The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
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Goodnight from London
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Robson
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the summer of 1940, ambitious young American journalist Ruby Sutton gets her big break: the chance to report on the European war as a staff writer for Picture Weekly newsmagazine in London. She jumps at the chance, for it's an opportunity not only to prove herself, but also to start fresh in a city and country that know nothing of her humble origins. But life in besieged Britain tests Ruby in ways she never imagined.
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Light story
- By Bev Holdgate on 08-10-17
By: Jennifer Robson
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Ordinary Thunderstorms
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.
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Amazing Story Teller
- By Dorothy on 09-07-14
By: William Boyd
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A Fatal Inversion
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: William Gaminara
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?
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Oh my!
- By Jill on 06-15-14
By: Barbara Vine
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The Best Man to Die
- An Inspector Wexford Mystery
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer....
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Classic who-dunnit
- By Kathi on 02-24-13
By: Ruth Rendell
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My Autobiography
- By: Charles Chaplin, David Robinson - introduction
- Narrated by: Steve John Shepherd
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Take an unforgettable journey with the man George Bernard Shaw called "the only genius to come out of the movie industry" as he moves from his impoverished South London childhood to the heights of Hollywood wealth and fame; from the McCarthy-era investigations to his founding of United Artists to his "reverse migration" back to Europe.
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Finally Chaplin’s auto is available!
- By Ryan Baumbach on 04-28-22
By: Charles Chaplin, and others
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The Berlin Stories
- By: Christopher Isherwood
- Narrated by: Michael York
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Christopher Isherwood's dramatized memoirs are prophetic images of a country preparing itself to embrace Hitler and the Third Reich. The Berlin Stories includes two works published together: The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin. These modern classics reveal in poignant detail the tragedy of mid-20th-century Germany.
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Nothing happens...
- By Tim Byers on 02-01-07
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The Romantic
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the award-winning, internationally best-selling author, a beguiling romp of a novel, at once intimate and panoramic, about the adventures and misadventures of a nineteenth-century everyman.
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Read the Author's Note first, not in the audiobook
- By Paul Haahr on 12-02-23
By: William Boyd
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Waiting for Sunrise
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Robert Ian MacKenzie
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment of a sexual nature, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is stunned, and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape - with the help of two mysterious British diplomats - saves him from trial. But the frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that steadily dismantles Lysander's life as he knows it.
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No need to wait.
- By Thomas D Kennedy on 07-25-12
By: William Boyd
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Restless
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Rosamund Pike
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone. Three decades later the secrets of Sally's past still haunt her.
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Favorite Book of 2007
- By Susianna on 12-27-07
By: William Boyd
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Love Is Blind
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When he is hired as the personal piano tuner for a brilliant pianist, Brodie Moncur suddenly finds himself swept up into a life of luxury that he could never have imagined. But while accompanying his new employer on tours from Paris to St. Petersburg, Brodie falls madly in love with the Russian soprano, Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive - and forbidden. Though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie’s passion for Lika only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous.
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Captures the protagonist's struggles
- By galcarm on 10-15-18
By: William Boyd
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Ordinary Thunderstorms
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.
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Amazing Story Teller
- By Dorothy on 09-07-14
By: William Boyd
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Sweet Caress
- The Many Lives of Amory Clay
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born into Edwardian England, Amory's first memory is of her father standing on his head. She has memories of him returning on leave during the First World War. But his absences, both actual and emotional, are what she chiefly remembers. It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, who, when he gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future.
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A good book killed by the narrator
- By Margaret M. Bell on 01-07-16
By: William Boyd
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The Romantic
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning, internationally best-selling author, a beguiling romp of a novel, at once intimate and panoramic, about the adventures and misadventures of a nineteenth-century everyman.
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Read the Author's Note first, not in the audiobook
- By Paul Haahr on 12-02-23
By: William Boyd
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Waiting for Sunrise
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Robert Ian MacKenzie
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment of a sexual nature, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is stunned, and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape - with the help of two mysterious British diplomats - saves him from trial. But the frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that steadily dismantles Lysander's life as he knows it.
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No need to wait.
- By Thomas D Kennedy on 07-25-12
By: William Boyd
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Restless
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Rosamund Pike
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone. Three decades later the secrets of Sally's past still haunt her.
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Favorite Book of 2007
- By Susianna on 12-27-07
By: William Boyd
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Love Is Blind
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
When he is hired as the personal piano tuner for a brilliant pianist, Brodie Moncur suddenly finds himself swept up into a life of luxury that he could never have imagined. But while accompanying his new employer on tours from Paris to St. Petersburg, Brodie falls madly in love with the Russian soprano, Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive - and forbidden. Though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie’s passion for Lika only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous.
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Captures the protagonist's struggles
- By galcarm on 10-15-18
By: William Boyd
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Ordinary Thunderstorms
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.
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Amazing Story Teller
- By Dorothy on 09-07-14
By: William Boyd
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Sweet Caress
- The Many Lives of Amory Clay
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born into Edwardian England, Amory's first memory is of her father standing on his head. She has memories of him returning on leave during the First World War. But his absences, both actual and emotional, are what she chiefly remembers. It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, who, when he gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future.
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A good book killed by the narrator
- By Margaret M. Bell on 01-07-16
By: William Boyd
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The Diary of a Bookseller
- By: Shaun Bythell
- Narrated by: Robin Laing
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books - both lost classics and new discoveries - introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.
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Wonderful
- By Brenda Campbell on 10-08-18
By: Shaun Bythell
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William Boyd: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
- A Good Man in Africa, An Ice Cream War, Restless and More
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Alan Rickman, Alison Steadman, Bill Paterson, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Original Recording
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A collection of BBC dramatisations and readings of William Boyd's award-winning novels and short stories. One of Britain's foremost contemporary writers, William Boyd is renowned worldwide for his bestselling novels, which have been translated into over 30 languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award (for A Good Man in Africa), the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for An Ice-Cream War) and the Costa Book Award (for Restless).
By: William Boyd
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Case Study
- By: Graeme Macrae Burnet
- Narrated by: Serena Manteghi, Graeme Rooney
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
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nope
- By SB on 12-15-22
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Trio
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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A producer. A novelist. An actress. It's summer 1968 - a time of war and assassinations, protests and riots. While the world is reeling, our trio is involved in making a disaster-plagued, Swingin' Sixties British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. As the movie shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable. Pressures build inexorably. The FBI and CIA get involved.
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Great book for a book club read
- By Possum Bean on 01-26-21
By: William Boyd
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The Complete Barchester Chronicles
- A Full-Cast BBC Radio Dramatisation
- By: Anthony Trollope
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings, Amanda Root, Anna Massey, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is a new audio edition of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of Anthony Trollope's gently satirical tales of provincial life, available together in one download. Nearly 20 hours of ironic, witty, and wonderfully written drama is contained in this audiobook. The cast includes Anna Massey, Alex Jennings, David Haig, Rosemary Leach, Kenneth Cranham, Emma Fielding, and Brenda Blethyn.
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Who would have thought I'd like this?
- By Armen on 03-15-09
By: Anthony Trollope
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The Forgotten Waltz
- By: Anne Enright
- Narrated by: Heather O'Neill
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Irish novelist Anne Enright won the coveted Man Booker Prize for her eloquent novel The Gathering. In The Forgotten Waltz, Enright crafts a stunning tale about a Dublin woman’s affair and its heartrending consequences. Gina Moynihan is already married when she meets Seán Vallely. But longing and desire soon overtake them - and their lives begin to crumble shortly after.
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Perfect Marriage of Novelist and Reader
- By Elizabeth on 01-02-17
By: Anne Enright
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Animals
- By: Emma Jane Unsworth
- Narrated by: Chloe Massey
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Laura and Tyler are best friends who live together, angrily philosophising and leading each other astray in the pubs and flats of Manchester. But things are set to change. Laura is engaged to teetotal Jim, the wedding is just months away, and Tyler becomes hell-bent on sabotaging her friend's plans for a different life.
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Fantastic narrator; great story
- By Bridget C. on 02-25-15
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Out of Love
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Hayes
- Narrated by: Hazel Hayes
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Out of Love begins at the end. A couple call it quits after nearly five years, and while holding a box of her ex-boyfriend’s belongings, the young woman wonders: How could they have spent so long together? When did they fall out of love? Were there good times before the bad? These are the questions we obsess over when a relationship ends, even when obsessing can do no good. But instead of moving forward through the emotional fallout of a break-up, Out of Love moves backward in time, weaving together an already unraveled tapestry.
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Honest Emotions After Losing Someone Close
- By danny on 10-10-21
By: Hazel Hayes
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In Ascension
- By: Martin MacInnes
- Narrated by: Freya Miller
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms—what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.
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Couldve been so much more
- By Faisal Sultan on 03-24-24
By: Martin MacInnes
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The Human Factor
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Tim Pigott-Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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When a leak is traced back to a small sub-section of SIS, it sparks off security checks, tensions and suspicions - the sort of atmosphere where mistakes could be made. This novel opens up the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the Secret Service.
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Non-traditional Espionage Novel that Subverts ALL
- By Darwin8u on 06-25-12
By: Graham Greene
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Fellowship Point
- A Novel
- By: Alice Elliott Dark
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 19 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly.
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Too far fetched at the end
- By JMNE on 08-25-22
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The Door
- By: Magda Szabó, Len Rix - translator
- Narrated by: Siân Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Intense, brilliant and moving, The Door is a compelling story about the relationship between two women of opposing backgrounds and personalities: one, an intellectual and writer; the other, her housekeeper, a mysterious, elderly woman who sets her own rules and abjures religion, education, pretense and any kind of authority. Beneath this hardened exterior of Emerence lies a painful story that must be concealed.
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Challenging, but an engrossing, literary work.
- By Earnest on 09-05-17
By: Magda Szabó, and others
What listeners say about Any Human Heart
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- connie
- 07-15-11
very satisfying story-telling
I'm tempted to call this novel "Forrest Gump Dances to the Music of Time" - but that would trivialize it. It's a more contemporary Evelyn Waugh/Anthony Powell -esque "20th century as lived through an (English) individual." The protagonist even meets Powell and Waugh in the course of his travels around and about the 20th century. It's not as grand as Powell, but then much of Powell dances over my head.
Our hero is Forrest Gump-like in that he causually crosses paths with an incredible number of historical figures -- but the story is so well spun, this never seems incredible when you're inside it. Of course, our hero is a literary figure, much like Powell's and Waugh's protagonists, but he's more accessible, and where Waugh would accentuate the satire and Powell make the prose dance, Boyd leans toward story and character and oblique historical backdrop.
You'll either love the novel or hate it. If the thought of "listening in" on a journal that skips a year here and there to land our Brit on the fringe of a revolution or other pivotal event turns you off, with discursions for how he's feeling about his current love and decor, skip it. I listened to it almost nonstop for two evenings and loved it.
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27 people found this helpful
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- Linda
- 05-08-12
Fiction with insight more often found in biography
This story and it's telling traverses the banalities of life from the lovingly familiar and mundane to the sweet ache when life offers splurges of intense emotion. I wonder if this is written for those who have covered most of their life's ground. The story offers favorite moments of characterization. This book engaged me.
I admire William Boyd's talent for writing - for telling. A favorite author.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Ilana
- 07-22-12
The Thrilling Life of the 20th Century Man
Logan Mountstuart's story, which spans every decade of the 20th century (born 1906, died 1991), is told through his personal journals, which he has kept off and on at various stages of his life. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he moved to England with his English father and Uruguayan mother as a young boy. The earliest pages of the journals having been lost, the story picks up sometime in LMS's teens, when he made a pact with his two best friends, which in one case, had lasting consequences. He decided to become a writer and published a successful novel after attending Oxford university, and his early success led him to meet some of the leading figures of the arts and letters, making for plenty of namedropping, from Hemingway (encountered in Spain during the civil war), to Picasso (whom he interviewed for an article), to Evelyn Waugh (who kissed him on the mouth), to name just a few. But his acquaintance with the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson may have had dramatic consequences, as he believed the duke, with whom he had fallen out of favour, later betrayed him during WWII, leading to two years of internment in Switzerland after a failed intelligence mission. Because of the nature of the documents through which we get to know LMS, we are presented with many facets of his life, from intimate details about his loves and lovers to little anecdotes and comments about a wide variety of topics and people.
LMS certainly lived an exciting life, but this book having been highly recommended to me by various people, and having read two of Boyd's books before, I had high expectations, and while I thought the story was very good for the most part, I wasn't so impressed with all the cameos and appearances of famous people in his life and kept wanting more, which is why the novel suddenly became absolutely fascinating to me when, as an old man, LMS hit hard times and had to go to extreme measures to eke out a living and fight to hang on to his dignity and sense of self, even as he found himself unable to write the novel that might have put him back on the map. By then end I was completely won over and quite fascinated by this monumental construction, which is one I'll have to find time to read again in future, as I'm sure I'll enjoy it very differently now that the whole picture has been revealed. Strongly recommended.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
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- Katrine
- 02-13-12
I didn't want this book to end
The story of Logan Mountstuart's life is told through his diary entries, taking him, and us, through the 20th century, bumping into major and minor writers, artists and historical personalities and touching on events like the spanish revolution, WW2, the Biafra War and a Baader-Meinhof plot. We get insider descriptions of milieus such as the Bloomsbury group, the Paris literati of the 20's and 30's, the music and arts scene in New York in 50's and 60's New York, and an assortment of spies, tax-refugees and expat royals in the Caribbean. Critics have pointed out that the plot is just a bi too contrived - routinely landing Mountstuart at the centre (or at least the fringes) of all this historical action, but it never seemed that way to me while listening. I found this beautifully written. Mountstuart's style does go through subtle changes, reflecting his age and the style of whatever present he is describing and, as always, Simon Vance's narration takes the prose up a notch. Logan Mountstuart is multi-faceted, a selfish, serial adulterer - longing for love and human connection, always moving on, but seeking a sense of home and belonging, part of big picture, but still obsessed with daily minutiae. I don't need to admire a literary character in every aspect to find his life a fascinating subject, or to feel a mild sense of loss as the narrative gently winds down, just before the next big turning point of the 20th century - the fall of the Berlin wall.
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10 people found this helpful
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- V. Takach
- 03-14-13
The story of a pretentious old Brit
Any additional comments?
Admittedly I stopped listening after about 7 hours. It was all just too much. The incredibly pretentious main character was too exhausting and I genuinely didn't care what would happen to him. The name-dropping was so frequent sometimes I felt all the narrator was doing was reading footnotes about who famous people are. Blech.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Richard
- 07-11-11
Interesting, engaging but not riviting
An interesting read, interesting concept, a fictional biography written by an unidentified hand. Its a detailed character study of one english individual and his few successes and many failings, buffeted about by the events of the 20th century.
You can empasize with him, but by the end I found him a curiously ackward and sightless individual, for all his experience and learning.
The plot winds on well, but you can tell that the author has written himself into corners at several locations and thus must resort to impluasable and jarring plot twists to get onto a reasonable track again, and some of those tracks run aground pretty quickly.
Well read, easy listening.
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- David Beaver
- 03-06-16
Middle class ennui
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, this is a classic underdog tale with excellent use of English language. As another reviewer commented, this is a very British "Forest Gump." It is a languid meander through the 20th century with fascinating characterization.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Any Human Heart?
This is an episodic book, each moment creating its own linked, but encapsulated 'memorable moment.' So it is difficult to extract one moment from another. The central character, Logan Mountstuart is a completely self-absorbed person with no or little insight into his selfishness. He manages to travel through an extraordinary life with middle-class boredom and complete British detachment to the effects he has on other people (as is befitting to his upbringing and era) whilst remaining complex and somehow likeable.
What about Simon Vance’s performance did you like?
Simon Vance created an understated but superbly crafted performance. He was able to transition from the schoolboy to elderly man and yet retain the same character, but with inflections of tone to suit the age of the character. Simon Vance conveyed the overall tone of Logan Mountstuart's character very well.
If you could take any character from Any Human Heart out to dinner, who would it be and why?
I don't live in the social circles of any of the characters from Any Human Heart. Going out to dinner with any of them would rely on their ability to put me at my ease. However, knowing them as I do from the book, I would know that the subtext of their thoughts would be how insufferably tedious they were finding the dinner. I would hate the social pressure to perform and try and seem interesting. Definitely a dinner invite to decline...
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- DrK
- 08-16-13
blech, what a guy
I really tried to like this story but could not. I believe Restless is, for instance, a terrific book, but this one? I suddenly thought I'd missed the real William Boyd. As the story careened from improbability to improbability (and yes, I DO like fiction), I lost interest, and by the time our hero got to Nigeria, I was outta there. I rarely don't go the distance on an audiobook.
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- Dorothy
- 04-02-12
A century-spanning tale told by a master
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. The story being told through journal entries brings an intimacy to the main character that wouldn't have been possible in another format. He lives his fascinating life to the fullest, even though his decisions weren't always the best ones. He's not a perfect human being, but he is an intelligent one, one who experiences great love and inevitable loss. He meets some of the great artists of the 20th century while living in England, the US, Nigeria and France, and his World War II experience reminds us of some of the myriad ways in which that conflict inflicted its great losses.
What did you like best about this story?
The breadth of the story and the close-up view of the main character's life.
Have you listened to any of Simon Vance’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Simon Vance is a masterful narrator here---as he is in everything I've heard him read. I heartily recommend his participation in Stone's Fall by Iain Pears.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I missed Logan Mountstuart so much when the book was finished; I wanted it to go on and on.
Any additional comments?
Thank you for including such literary fiction on Audible!
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- John L. Moncrief
- 10-25-18
Feeling like one of the inferior intellectuals in the salon
I listened to this book because the author wrote Restless, a top five audio book for me. Also it seems to be a fan favorite. It depicts the life of a British writer through his journals kept in various parts of the world. It is richly detailed and covers a lot of cultural ground over s period of 60 years or so. I found it engrossing up to 1945 but then it becomes rather sad. Did not buy some of the choices he made. I admit it. I wanted a happier ending. So shallow of me.
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2 people found this helpful