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House of Sand and Fog
- Narrated by: Andre Dubus III, Fontaine Dollas Dubus
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
Drawn by their competing desires to the same small house in the California hills and doomed by their tragic inability to understand one another, the three converge in an explosive collision course. Combining unadorned realism with profound empathy, House of Sand and Fog marks the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.
Critic reviews
- Book Sense Book of the Year Award Finalist, Adult Fiction, 2001
"We've got all the ingredients for an old-fashioned tragedy. Brilliantly written, and presented with feeling, this is one of the saddest stories ever told." (AudioFile)
"Dubus has created a novel that is nearly perfectly suited to the audio format....The reading by the author and his wife is sublime." (Publishers Weekly)
"Dubus sets out the growing confrontation with chilly ingenuity and a remarkably observant compassion....[A] fine and prophetic novel." (Los Angeles Times)
"Dubus writes gorgeous prose with a noirish edge." (Booklist)
"An enthralling tragedy." (Kirkus)
"Dubus...is clearly a talent to be reckoned with....House of Sand and Fog is a page-turner with a beating heart." (Boston Golobe)
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Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.
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HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
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Laguna Heat
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.
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Fabulous
- By Stacy on 02-24-09
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The Last Dead Girl
- By: Harry Dolan
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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On a rainy night in April, a chance encounter on a lonely road draws David into a romance with Jana Fletcher, a beautiful young law student. Jana is an enigma: living in a run-down apartment and sporting a bruise on her cheek that she refuses to explain. David would like to know her secrets, but he lets them lie-until it's too late. When Jana is brutally murdered, the police consider David a prime suspect.
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A great, dark read, appropriate reader too.
- By Karen on 05-01-14
By: Harry Dolan
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Damage Control
- A Novel
- By: Robert Dugoni
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A rising star at her prestigious Seattle law firm, Dana Hill knows all about stress. She pours herself into her work and family with all the energy she has. But her carefully balanced life is about to be turned upside down. First a frightening medical diagnosis forces her to reassess her roles as a lawyer, mother, and wife to a man she suddenly no longer trusts. Then her life is rocked further by the shocking and brutal murder of her twin brother.
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Better than average mystery/thriller
- By T. McCloskey on 10-08-15
By: Robert Dugoni
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You Know When the Men Are Gone
- By: Siobhan Fallon
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls. You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain. You also know when the men are gone. As Siobhan Fallon shows in this collection of loosely interconnected short stories, each woman deals with her husband's absence differently.
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You know when you've got a great read!
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-22-11
By: Siobhan Fallon
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Iron Lake
- Cork O'Connor, Book 1
- By: William Kent Krueger
- Narrated by: David Chandler
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger crafts this riveting tale about a small Minnesota town’s ex-sheriff who is having trouble retiring his badge. Cork O’Connor loses his job after being blamed for a tragedy on the local Anishinaabe Indian reservation. But he must set aside his personal demons when a young boy goes missing on the same day a judge commits suicide—and no one but O’Connor suspects foul play.
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Great New Series
- By Lia on 06-01-18
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Nine Lives
- Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans
- By: Dan Baum
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Nines Lives is a multivoiced biography of a dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city, told through the lives of nine unforgettable characters and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed New Orleans in the 1960s, and Hurricane Katrina, which nearly destroyed it. Dan Baum brings this kaleidoscopic portrait to life, showing us what was lost in the storm and what remains to be saved.
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Do not miss if you're interested in New Orleans
- By Kelly on 03-22-18
By: Dan Baum
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Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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Signals: New and Selected Stories
- By: Tim Gautreaux
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with 12 new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina, and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities.
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Perfection! Amazing writer/amazing reader
- By Monique on 01-08-19
By: Tim Gautreaux
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The Blue Hour
- Merci Rayborn, Book 1
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Tim Hess is a semiretired veteran cop staring at a death sentence - his own. Detective Merci Rayborn, young enough to be his daughter, is brash, impatient, and not someone from whom Hess wants to be taking orders. He certainly isn't planning on falling in love with her. Together, they must track down a psychopathic killer who's been abducting beautiful young women from the malls of Orange County.
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Outstanding book, exceptional reader
- By Jan on 03-24-10
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This one was tough to get through, because it rips your heart out.
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I like the verisimilitude and how the era is honestly portrayed.
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More like a 3.25 star rating
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A moving though flawed novel
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Unnesesary & overuse of the phrase 'Nigga Women'
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The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
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Read this book if your heart is made of steal
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GAP creek Review
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A Lesson Before Dying
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A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Louisiana Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young illiterate black man, is falsely convicted of murder and is sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, the plantation schoolteacher, agrees to talk with the condemned man. The two men forge a bond as they come to understand what it means to resist and defy one's fate.
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Altogether was amazing!!
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Light in August
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Light in August features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.
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Simply great.
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Icy Sparks
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A funny, sad, and transcendent story of a young girl growing up in Appalachia. The New York Times Book Review called this Oprah Book Club selection "vivid and unforgettable."
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Icy made me warm.
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What listeners say about House of Sand and Fog
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- BogKid
- 01-12-04
I suspect I am going to be in the minority . . .
I suspect I am going to be in the minority, but I did not like this book. As the one other (so far) reviewer has said, no one in the book is likeable. I found that to be a bit disconcerting, but I do have to admit that the real world is not densely populated by all wonderful people. I never met a dog I didn't like.
To keep this very brief, my problems with this book revolve around several concerns:
[1] The complete ineptness of everyone in resolving the property tax problem early on and the string of negative coincidences creating the situation made for a less than believable basic premise for the book. Has something like this every happened? I suppose so, but . . .
[2] Is anyone in this book ever capable of making just one reasonably sensible judgement, one which does not inevitably lead to disaster?
[3] One positive. I want to hire those builders who built that roof deck so incredibly quickly. Those guys are not in business in my area.
Over-all, a book which seems highly over-rated to me. I enjoy Ben Kingsley's acting and I am sure he handles the Colonel's character very well but I will have to reserve seeing the film until some day when I am so overwhelmingly sunny and happy that I need to be brought down a few notches.
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53 people found this helpful
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Overall
- JOHN
- 04-18-04
Tremendous!
I believe the relatively low customer rating of this book is misleading. Just because the story is a TRAGEDY, doesn't make it any less of a wonderful literary effort. Just because a reader doesn't like the morality the characters, the story is nonetheless brilliant! I am a longtime Audible member. I have never been compelled to review a book before online. I feel that House of Sand and Fog is one of the best works I have had the pleasure to listen to. The back-and-forth voices of the male and female combatants work wonderfully. The reader is steered into the lives of two completely opposite characters to look through their eyes from conflicting points of view. Each adversary contributes to the deterioration of the problem that leads to a shocking crescendo. After listening to this book, I went to see the "critically acclaimed" movie. The film cannot hold a candle to the depth of this book. The characters lives are developed methodically and perfectly to the extent to where the reader can clearly feel their pain. Perhaps, this is why some find it hard to take.
Usually it is a mistake when an author narrates his/her own book. However, in this case the narration could not be more perfect.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
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23 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Lisa
- 06-08-04
Astounding characterizations, and wonderfully read
I found this audiobook absolutely riveting -- almost perfectly read, with the important twist of having separate male and female voices, given that the book is mostly a series of interior monologues from the various characters. Yes, you know they are all spiraling down to disaster, but the author has caught the internal voices of the characters very well, sometimes exquisitely. The Irani ex-colonel is particularly finely wrought, but I found the others well done also. The book is a meditation on the many different ways we organize our relationships with others, and how many different ways those relationships can fall apart. Father, mother, husband, wife, child, sibling, lover, immigrant, native, boss, subordinate, trainee, soldier in a strict military hierarchy -- Dubus manages to explore and say something interesting about all of these ties, with a bit of political and economic commentary that is subordinate to the more important themes. An amazing audiobook, one of the most satisfying I have listened to. My only criticism -- the brief interludes of music between sections are jarringly inappropriate. One caveat to this review: I have not seen the movie, so I came to the book without any movie-induced preconceptions.
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15 people found this helpful
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Overall
- AudibleAvid
- 01-01-04
gripping
i read this book and could hardly put it down....the characters are perfectly portrayed and it is very hard to like any of them. who is right? who is deserving? how can something so simple turn out so tragic for all concerned. the ending couldn't have been more appropriate.
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14 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Steve
- 10-06-08
Eerily fine line between normal and off the rails
This audiobook grabbed me by the ears and wouldn't let me put it down until it was done telling me its story. The characters reflect some of the better traits in all of us - romantic love, determination, familial bonds, responsibility, drive - and what can happen when these become flawed. They're enough like the rest of us that I identified with most of the characters, and cringed as things slowly began to fall apart for them.
I downloaded this one 3 days ago. Now it's all listened to, and I'm wishing I had another credit in the bank to get me through the rest of the month. I could probably use a breather anyway. One of the downsides of a great listen...
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Lawrence
- 05-29-04
Preposterous Plot; Moronic Characters
One of the worst books I've ever read or heard. I could not get beyond the rediculous premise that the author seems to believe creates some great moral dilemna. Does the author expect readers to believe that an erroneous 6 month old $500 tax delinquency would result in eviction of the owner from a house worth $170K and foreclosure sale of that house for $45K on the same day? What about legal due process requirements? What happened to the sale proceeds and why weren't they given to the evicted homeowner? For those who can get past that, the story proceeds with a series of moronic and irrational actions by virtually every character in the book leading to the predictable ending. A complete waste of time.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Cassandra
- 07-05-10
Intense
This was one of the most intense books I've ever listened to, and I won't listen to it again because it was just so appallingly sad. As the narrator worked through the story, you just knew that it was all going to end very, very badly. The suspense kept growing, at the same time as you hoped the characters would learn to relate to each other but realized that it was impossible. It disappoints me that people give the book bad reviews because they never learned to "like" the characters. Sorry, folks, but the deep flaws and unlikability of these characters are what built the story. The complete lack of self-awareness, empathy and remorse of the female character, even at the end, was breathtaking. I'm sure there really are people out there similar to these characters and unspeakable tragedies occuring frequently. Keep an open mind and listen. I thought it was great.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Cassie
- 12-22-09
Far from a favorite
I don't even know where to start with this book. A finalist for the National Book Award, an Oprah Book Club selection AND turned into a movie? Either there is something I missed here or the world has gone bananas. I did not like this book, however the narrators did a great job and probably caused me to dislike it less than if I had read it in print. The first half of the book was interesting as the author developed the characters and provided back story. As the story progressed chronologically, however, it got more and more bizarre. The actions of the characters were foreseeable yet illogical at the same time, making for a very odd disconnect. The story started out as realistic, then became increasingly outlandish as it continued. I don't demand all fiction to be realistic, but I would like consistency throughout a novel. I also felt the character of Mrs. Behrani was underdeveloped. She was ignored to such an extent in the first half of the novel, I was shocked when she later became a pivotal character and frustrated that her minimal character development was done through her husband's viewpoint. This book's summary sounds quite bizarre: two people fighting over a house. I was hesitant to pick it up based on that, and wish I'd trusted my instinct.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Sriley721
- 04-27-08
Sandy
I bought this download based on the reviews. The reviewers didn't let me down. I never listen to an audio book at home or in the car because I save them for the train commute but this book is a true " cant put down" book. I listened at work, at home,the car and even in the grocery store. I like the way this book makes you think about the 2 sides to every story. A truly though provoking story, I enjoyed every minute
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Overall
- Pamela Harvey
- 01-13-04
Good story, bad train wreck.
I am ambivalent. The vision is a little dark, the characters a little flawed, but I basically still enjoyed the book. The romantic sidebar had its appeal but the emphasis on sex was over the top. The conflict is an interesting premise but I couldn't get past the fact that once the county had admitted its mistake, the Colonel should have been legally required to sell back for the price he paid and consequently all the pain and downward momentum seemed unecessary to me as a reader. Unfortunate that not one of these characters grows spiritually or learns anything from this experience, a theme which would have given the story some balance and perspective, and Part II moves at the speed of drying paint. Still a good read though, if not an uplifting one.
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7 people found this helpful