We are currently making improvements to the Audible site. In an effort to enhance the accessibility experience for our customers, we have created a page to more easily navigate the new experience, available at the web address www.audible.com/access.
The Croning | [Laird Barron]
Play The Croning

The Croning

  • UNABRIDGED
  • by Laird Barron
  • Narrated by Emily Zeller
  • Whispersync for Voice-ready
  • Your Likes make Audible better!

    'Likes' are shared on Facebook and Audible.com. We use your 'likes' to improve Audible.com for all our listeners.

    You can turn off Audible.com sharing from your Account Details page.

    OK
  • Regular Price :$24.95
  • Whispersync for Voice

    Listen to The Croning, then pick up right where you left off with the Kindle book. Learn more

Two ways to buy!

What's Trending in Sci-Fi & Fantasy:

  • Average Customer Rating
  • Overall
    (4)
    Performance
    (4)
    Story
    (3)
 
  • LENGTH
    10 hrs and 51 mins
  • RELEASE DATE
    08-06-12
  • AUDIO FORMATS
    About Audio Formats
    2 3 4 Enhanced Audio
 

People who bought this also bought...

Publisher's Summary

Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us....

Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret... of The Croning.

From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.

©2012 Laird Barron (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

What the Critics Say

"It’s a rare year in which a superabundance of fine horror novels — novels that reward rereading — appears. That said, most years bring at least a handful of novels whose titles can stand to be mentioned alongside Matheson’s I Am Legend, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and King’s The Shining. To this year’s list, add Laird Barron’s The Croning." (Los Angeles Review of Books)

What Members Say

Average Customer Rating

3.0 (4 ratings)
5 star
 (1)
4 star
 (0)
3 star
 (1)
2 star
 (2)
1 star
 (0)
Overall
4.0 (3 ratings)
5 star
 (2)
4 star
 (0)
3 star
 (0)
2 star
 (1)
1 star
 (0)
Story
2.3 (4 ratings)
5 star
 (0)
4 star
 (1)
3 star
 (1)
2 star
 (0)
1 star
 (2)
Performance
  •  
    Old Man Parker Kailua-Kona, HI, United States 10-17-12
    Old Man Parker Kailua-Kona, HI, United States 10-17-12 Member Since 2009

    Me am Pop-Surrealist Tiki-Artist living and making Art on the active volcanic "Big Island" of Hawaii. Aloha.

    HELPFUL VOTES
    28
    ratings
    REVIEWS
    55
    47
    FOLLOWERS
    FOLLOWING
    6
    2
    Overall
    Performance
    Story
    "Great Writer - Good story - VERY Wrong Reader,"
    Is there anything you would change about this book?

    YES! The narrator! Laird Barron writes Horror Noir - a dark & scary cross of Mikey Spillane & H. P. Lovecraft. He is bound for not just being good, but being GREAT. He writes from a first person view of gritty tough-guys that have stepped right out of a violent 1940's crime pulp novel. His characters gruffly talk about their cocks, and middle age, and death, and killing, and horror. Audible, for some strange reason, chose the very beautiful, young, very feminine voice of "Emily Zeller" to read you this story. This story: of a tough old man facing cosmic inhuman mind-bending vile evil.
    It's like picking "Hanna Montanna" to sing KISS's "Destroyer" album. It's as wrong as "The Captain and Tennille" singing Judas Priest's "Sad Wings of Destiny" Album, or Metalica's "Black" album. Julie Andrews should NOT sing Rob Zombie's "Hellbilly Deluxe"!
    Ya' gettin' me here?
    It just don't work!
    The greatest reader of H. P. Lovecraft work is "Wayne June". His voice is deep, rough, and sounds like he's had a life of first hand experience of... evil things, he's walked to the edge of the pit, looked in, and made it back.
    Do you want to hear Laird Barron and a correct narrator? I urge you now to go to "Tales To Terrify" (the pod cast) and listen to episode # 40. Listen to "Frontier Death Song" by Laird Barron and read by "David Robison". David has a whiskey and smokes rough voice that turns Laird's tough, noir, words into cryptic-dark-spine-freezing passages punched out of the Necronomicon by way of a 40's detective radio show wearing brass knucles. Awesome.
    Don't get me wrong, Emily Zeller is a fine reader.
    I want Emily Zeller to read me "The Hobbit".
    Or "Lord of the Rings". Something with Elves in it.
    What I DON'T want is Emily Zelle, who sounds like my cute 20 year old niece, telling me about HER dick "shooting blanks"... I don't even want to think about her thinking about things like that, let alone trying her best to sound "tough" and "mean" and middle aged, and well, male.
    OK, maybe a woman could have narrated this book. However, she needs to sound like she could eat bullets and spit nails. She needs "the chops" to do it - she needs the sound in her voice of a life of hard drinking, smoking, heart breaking, and ass-kicking.
    Audible - you forgot the golden first rule on this one!!!
    RULE #1.) You need to know the book, and you need to know the narrator and "IF" they will work together. This is maybe one of the worst choices of reader for this novel. We needed "Mickey Rourke" , instead we got "Annette Funicello"!


    What did you like best about this story?

    Laird Barron is a good talent, becoming GREAT!


    How could the performance have been better?

    You needed "David Robison", or "Wayne June" to read this, NOT "Emily Zeller".


    If this book were a movie would you go see it?

    Yes.


    Any additional comments?

    Please know the material and put it together with the right reader! This is a good/ maybe great horror noir book, but it's hard to tell because the narration is done by the wrong person.

    1 of 1 people found this review helpful
  • Showing: 1-1 of 1 results

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.

CANCEL

Thank You

Your report has been received. It will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.