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Xtabentum
- A Novel of Yucatan
- Narrated by: Eva R. Marienchild
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
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Xtabentum
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Publisher's summary
According to Mayan legend, the Xtabentum flower that grows wild on the Yucatan peninsula first appeared on the grave of a free-spirited young woman who was scorned for her passion by the people of her village, but loved by the gods for her kind heart.
Xtabentum: A Novel of Yucatan is a story of two young women set in the years following the Mexican Revolution in Merida, Yucatan, one of the wealthiest cities in the world at the time. Amanda Diaz is from the "divine caste," a small group of families of European descent who dominate the politics and economy of the region. Amanda's lifelong friend, Carmen, is from the opposite end of the social spectrum, a Mayan Indian who is the daughter of one of the Diaz family servants. Against the true historical background of rebellion and assassination in the unstable country, the whipping of Carmen by a Diaz neighbor exposes the sheltered existence of the two women and drives them apart.
The story follows Amanda through her horror at the social injustice of the two-class Mexico to the sacrifices she makes in the name of friendship. Parts of the story take place in modern times, where the discovery of an old birth certificate sets Amanda's granddaughter in search of a secret about her father's birth. Her search, told in the first person, is blended with a third-person account of the lives of Amanda and her contemporaries in the 1920s.
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Mother Tongue
- A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women
- By: Tania Romanov
- Narrated by: Becky Parker
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
What is your mother tongue? Sometimes the simplest questions take a book to answer. Such is the case with Tania Romanov's story of exile, emigration, and immigration and how native language can be a powerful touchstone for the sense of home. The unrelenting consequences of 100 years of Balkan wars force three generations of Croatian women to flee their homelands multiple times. Eventually, Tania, a successfully integrated American immigrant from Eastern Europe, journeys back to her fractured homeland with her mother to unravel the secrets of their shared past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ljiljana Popovic, born in former Yugoslavia
- By Ljiljana Popovic on 03-18-21
By: Tania Romanov
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They Said They Wanted Revolution
- A Memoir of My Parents
- By: Neda Toloui-Semnani
- Narrated by: Neda Toloui-Semnani
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I learned so much. Great pacing, felt like I time-traveled
- By Jess Fuchs on 02-07-22
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When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
- A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
- By: Le Ly Hayslip, Jay Wurts
- Narrated by: Nancy Kwan
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
This haunting memoir tells the brutal story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of an innocent victim whose childhood was dominated by violence, devastation, and conflicts between the teachings of her culture and the realities of war. The youngest in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was 12 years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her village. She was raped and "ruined" for marriage by Viet Cong soldiers, imprisoned and tortured by the South Vietnamese, and sentenced to death by the Viet Cong. Ultimately fleeing to the U.S. with her children, she finally found peace, and in 1986, she was reunited with her family in Vietnam. The story of her homecoming, interwoven with her memories of the war years, paints a vivid picture of a noble, optimistic woman and her native country.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Difficult to listen to
- By heatherhg on 07-01-07
By: Le Ly Hayslip, and others
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My Mother's Secret
- Based on a True Holocaust Story
- By: J. L. Witterick
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 420
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 365
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 364
Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are simple, ordinary people until 1939, when the Nazis invade their homeland. Providing shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland is a death sentence, but Franciszka and Helena do exactly that. In their tiny home in Sokal, they hide a Jewish family in a loft above their pigsty, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen, and a defecting German soldier in the attic - each party completely unknown to the others.
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5 out of 5 stars
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WONDERFUL!!!
- By Robyn Collins on 02-29-16
By: J. L. Witterick
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In Order to Live
- A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Eji Kim
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 5,788
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,095
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Story5 out of 5 stars 5,090
In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow. What a story!
- By Jfm on 02-01-16
By: Yeonmi Park
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Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
- By: Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By Nordic Artisan on 07-09-18
By: Planaria Price, and others
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The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 204
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 184
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 183
"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
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Find Me Unafraid
- Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
- By: Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson, Mandy Siegfried, P.J. Ochlan (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 353
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 319
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Story5 out of 5 stars 317
Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a foreword by Nicholas Kristof.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A difficult and rewarding listen
- By R. MCRACKAN on 08-23-18
By: Kennedy Odede, and others
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After the Roundup
- Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
- By: Joseph Weismann
- Narrated by: J. Clark Allison
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 11-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated. A thousand children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A “must-listen” book
- By Jonathan R Scupin on 09-25-18
By: Joseph Weismann
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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 527
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 456
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Story5 out of 5 stars 452
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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Under Red Skies
- Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China
- By: Karoline Kan
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An intimate view of real life in China
- By Lonnie G. Hardy, Jr. on 08-15-19
By: Karoline Kan
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Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 95
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 86
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Story5 out of 5 stars 84
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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Something Beautiful Happened
- A Story of Survival and Courage in the Face of Evil
- By: Yvette Manessis Corporon
- Narrated by: Pam Turlow
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
Yvette Manessis Corporon grew up listening to her grandmother's stories about how the people of the small Greek island Erikousa hid a Jewish family - a tailor named Savvas and his daughters - from the Nazis during World War II. Nearly 2,000 Jews from that area died in the concentration camps, but even though everyone on Erikousa knew Savvas and his family were hiding on the island, no one ever gave them up, and the family survived the war. Years later, Yvette decided to track down the man's descendants - and eventually found them in Israel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely wonderful! Thank you, Yvette.
- By Cellowoman on 09-21-17
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Shadow of a Century
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 261
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 228
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 225
Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved this book!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-14-20
By: Jean Grainger
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Maya's Notebook
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Maria Cabezas
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 410
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 359
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 361
Neglected by her parents, 19-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up in Berkeley with her grandparents. Her grandmother Nini is a force of nature, a woman whose formidable strength helped her build a new life after emigrating from Chile in 1973. Popo, Maya's grandfather, is a gentle man whose solid, comforting presence helps calm the turbulence of Maya's adolescence. When Popo dies of cancer, Maya goes completely off the rails, turning to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime in a downward spiral that eventually bottoms out in Las Vegas.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Narrator ruins this book
- By R.J. Mulder on 05-13-14
By: Isabel Allende
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The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 177
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 162
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 159
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
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Master of the Game
- By: Sidney Sheldon
- Narrated by: Shannon Engemann
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 12
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10
Kate Blackwell is the symbol of success—a beautiful woman who parlayed her inheritance into an international conglomerate. Winner of a unique position among the wealthy and world-renowned, she is also a survivor as indomitable as her father, who returned from the edge of death to wrench a fortune in diamonds from the hard South African soil. As she celebrates her ninetieth birthday, Kate surveys the family she has manipulated, dominated, and loved over the decades and asks herself: Is she the master of the game?
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5 out of 5 stars
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darn good book
- By Kindle Customer on 04-02-24
By: Sidney Sheldon
What listeners say about Xtabentum
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- N. Weeks
- 09-26-23
Horrible
I couldn’t finish’s this. It seemed to be written and narrated by 10 year olds.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer
- 03-28-18
Good story. Translation and narration lacking.
The story is interesting enough, though I would have appreciated more historical context. There were some basic errors in translation, which were distracting. I usually read and listen simultaneously, but had to discard the audio because the narration was so bad. There was very little expression in the narrator's voice. What little expression there was reminded me a a first grade teacher reading aloud.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 03-25-24
The narration is horrid
The narration is so robotic and just terrible. I could not get past the 2nd chapter
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