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The Crowd Sounds Happy
- A Story of Love, Madness, and Baseball
- Narrated by: Pat Young
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
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The Crowd Sounds Happy
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Publisher's summary
Growing up in a doomed hometown with a missing father and a single mother, Nicholas Dawidoff listened to baseball every night on his bedside radio, the professional ballplayers gradually becoming the men in his life. A portrait of a childhood shaped by a stoical, enterprising mother, a disturbed, dangerous father, the private world of baseball, and the awkwardness of first love, The Crowd Sounds Happy is the moving tale of a spirited boy's coming-of-age in troubled times.
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Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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Netherland
- By: Joseph O'Neill
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 322
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 139
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 140
Alone and un-tethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Get Your Post-Colonial Gatsby ON!
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-12
By: Joseph O'Neill
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Beer Money
- A Memoir of Privilege and Loss
- By: Frances Stroh
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 211
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 190
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Story4 out of 5 stars 189
Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Beer boring
- By Richard E. Putt Jr. on 05-22-16
By: Frances Stroh
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The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
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A Chance in the World
- An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home
- By: Steve Pemberton
- Narrated by: Steve Pemberton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story5 out of 5 stars 126
A Chance in the World is the unbelievably true story of a wounded and broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good Book
- By Amazon Customer on 08-19-20
By: Steve Pemberton
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After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4 out of 5 stars 43
Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
By: Lori Ostlund
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 27 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 10,647
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8,851
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,839
Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding
- By Alan on 03-28-11
By: John Irving
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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 526
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 455
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Story5 out of 5 stars 451
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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The UnAmericans
- Stories
- By: Molly Antopol
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 124
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4 out of 5 stars 111
Again and again, Molly Antopol’s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control. Their voices are intimate and powerful and they resonate with searing beauty. Antopol is a superb young talent, and The UnAmericans will long be remembered for its wit, humanity, and heart.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sensational stories! Brilliant new author.
- By MidwestGeek on 05-04-14
By: Molly Antopol
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The Cost of These Dreams
- Sports Stories and Other Serious Business
- By: Wright Thompson
- Narrated by: Wright Thompson
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 445
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 392
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Story5 out of 5 stars 390
There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most-read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just great
- By ACK on 06-02-19
By: Wright Thompson
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To See the Moon Again
- By: Jamie Langston Turner
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
The first step to letting go of the past is forgiving it …Every day of her life Julia Rich lives with the memory of a horrible accident she caused long ago. In the years since, she has tried to hide her guilt in the quiet routine of teaching at a small South Carolina college, avoiding close relationships with family and would-be friends. But one day a phone call from Carmen, a niece she has never met, disrupts her carefully controlled world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful Story of Forgiveness and Selfless Love
- By sharon on 09-20-14
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No Biking in the House Without a Helmet
- By: Melissa Fay Greene
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, "among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to 69 children in eighteenth-century Russia."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great story of family changes
- By Peter on 02-14-12
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Fragile Beasts
- A Novel
- By: Tawni O'Dell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Laural Merlington
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
When their hard-drinking but loving father dies in a car accident, teenage brothers Kyle and Klint Hayes face a bleak prospect: leaving their Pennsylvania hometown for an uncertain life in Arizona with the mother who ran out on them years ago. But in a strange twist of fate, their town's matriarch, an eccentric, wealthy old woman whose family once owned the county coal mines, hears the boys' story and takes them in.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tawni O'Dell Fan
- By bette on 09-20-10
By: Tawni O'Dell
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After Visiting Friends
- A Son's Story
- By: Michael Hainey
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 83
Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Son's Search for Father Brings on Self-knowledge
- By sheila kehoe on 08-15-13
By: Michael Hainey
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 170
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4 out of 5 stars 140
Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu