-
Binary Star
- Narrated by: Sarah Gerard
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $13.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
-
-
I love it...
- By Claudia Gallegos on 07-12-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
Three Women
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down.
-
-
Moving, literary nonfiction
- By Homer on 07-25-19
By: Lisa Taddeo
-
McGlue
- A Novella
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation - he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety.
-
-
Ultra-sensory tale of a sailor
- By Rogerio Lira on 12-01-20
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
The Shards
- A Novel
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Bret Easton Ellis
- Length: 23 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them—and Bret in particular—with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence.
-
-
So great to have a new book from one of my favorites!
- By Rebeccah Fries on 01-24-23
-
Milk Fed
- By: Melissa Broder
- Narrated by: Melissa Broder
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control through obsessive food rituals while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting - until her therapist encourages her to take a 90-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Rachel soon meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her.
-
-
Funny and uncomfortable
- By Kayla on 04-01-21
By: Melissa Broder
-
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
- A Memoir
- By: Bill Clegg
- Narrated by: Bill Clegg
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life.
-
-
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN
- By K.A. DALY on 08-05-10
By: Bill Clegg
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
-
-
I love it...
- By Claudia Gallegos on 07-12-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
Three Women
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down.
-
-
Moving, literary nonfiction
- By Homer on 07-25-19
By: Lisa Taddeo
-
McGlue
- A Novella
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation - he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety.
-
-
Ultra-sensory tale of a sailor
- By Rogerio Lira on 12-01-20
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
The Shards
- A Novel
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Bret Easton Ellis
- Length: 23 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them—and Bret in particular—with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence.
-
-
So great to have a new book from one of my favorites!
- By Rebeccah Fries on 01-24-23
-
Milk Fed
- By: Melissa Broder
- Narrated by: Melissa Broder
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control through obsessive food rituals while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting - until her therapist encourages her to take a 90-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Rachel soon meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her.
-
-
Funny and uncomfortable
- By Kayla on 04-01-21
By: Melissa Broder
-
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
- A Memoir
- By: Bill Clegg
- Narrated by: Bill Clegg
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life.
-
-
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN
- By K.A. DALY on 08-05-10
By: Bill Clegg
-
The Memory of Running
- By: Ron McLarty
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In late 2003, in his column in Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King called The Memory of Running "the best novel you won't read this year." This glowing endorsement of the audiobook resulted in Ron McLarty receiving a $2 million two-book deal from Viking Penguin. Also, Warner Brothers has shelled out big bucks for the movie rights to The Memory of Running, for which McLarty will write the script.
-
-
Funny and Fascinating, A Wonderful Book
- By Ripp on 02-18-04
By: Ron McLarty
-
Marlena
- A Novel
- By: Julie Buntin
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything about 15-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts - first drink, first cigarette, first kiss - while Marlena's habits harden and calcify.
-
-
A Brilliant, Agonizing Portrait of a Young Woman
- By Sudi on 06-06-17
By: Julie Buntin
-
The Last Romantics
- A Novel
- By: Tara Conklin
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1981, the young Skinner siblings - fierce Renee, dreamy Caroline, golden boy Joe, and watchful Fiona - lose their father to a heart attack and their mother to a paralyzing depression, events that thrust them into a period they will later call “the Pause”. Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future that stretches before them, the siblings navigate the dangers and resentments of the Pause to emerge fiercely loyal and deeply connected. Two decades later, the Skinners find themselves again confronted with a family crisis....
-
-
Maybe the best book I ever read
- By Plundered treasure on 02-16-19
By: Tara Conklin
-
White Oleander
- By: Janet Fitch
- Narrated by: Oprah Winfrey
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping first novel, a young girl, orphaned when her mother murders an ex-lover, endures the shuffle of a foster child's life. Oprah enjoyed her book club pick so much that she narrates the audiobook edition!
Browse more Oprah Picks.
-
-
White Oleander
- By Tracy on 04-09-04
By: Janet Fitch
-
The Gilded Razor
- A Memoir
- By: Sam Lansky
- Narrated by: Cole Ferguson
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life. By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out.
-
-
Annoying, Privileged Teenager Tells his Story
- By Michelle in New York City on 03-15-16
By: Sam Lansky
-
The Answer to the Riddle Is Me
- A Memoir of Amnesia
- By: David Stuart MacLean
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2002, at age 28, David MacLean woke up in a foreign land with his memory wiped clean. No money. No passport. No identity. Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics and scenes from television shows but not his family, his friends, or the woman he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he was taking. Upon hisreturn to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself.
-
-
fascinating story
- By Sadie on 08-22-15
-
The Perfect Liar
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Christopher Greene
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her 15-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. Strong-willed and attractive, Susannah expects her life is perfectly in place again. Then one quiet morning, she finds a note on her door: "I Know Who You Are." Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon, a second note appears on their door....
-
-
Honestly......
- By MA Reviewer on 01-20-19
-
Torch
- By: Cheryl Strayed
- Narrated by: Cheryl Strayed
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!" is the advice Teresa Rae Wood shares with the listeners of her local radio show, Modern Pioneers, and the advice she strives to live by every day. She has fled a bad marriage and rebuilt a life with her children, Claire and Joshua, and their caring stepfather, Bruce. Their love for each other binds them as a family through the daily struggles of making ends meet. But when they received unexpected news that Teresa, only 38, is dying of cancer, their lives all begin to unravel and drift apart.
-
-
Don't Listen to the Intro
- By Heather Humble on 02-08-17
By: Cheryl Strayed
-
Loud in the House of Myself
- Memoir of a Strange Girl
- By: Stacy Pershall
- Narrated by: Stacy Pershall
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.
-
-
Short, but Intense Memoir
- By Lindsay on 06-19-13
By: Stacy Pershall
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Abridged=Horrible
- By Kelly on 05-05-13
By: Marya Hornbacher
-
Shit Cassandra Saw
- Stories
- By: Gwen E. Kirby
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Sura Siu, Rob Shapiro, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers.
-
-
Delightful collection of feminist short stories
- By SB on 01-13-22
By: Gwen E. Kirby
-
Homesick for Another World
- Stories
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.
-
-
Funny, Dynamic Writing
- By Sofia Macht on 06-13-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
Publisher's Summary
The language of the stars is the language of the body. Like a star the anorexic burns fuel that isn't replenished; she is held together by her own gravity.
With luminous, lyrical prose, Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. On a road trip circumnavigating the United States, they stumble onto a book on veganarchism and believe they've found a direction.
Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick (or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions) and a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success.
More from the same
Author
What listeners say about Binary Star
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Annie The Audible Addict!!!
- 07-24-15
Difficult Listen..
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
MMMMM...Idk....its very tragic...
What was one of the most memorable moments of Binary Star?
I think I will remember this whole book for quite some time...
What about Sarah Gerard’s performance did you like?
I had to settle into her narration...she speaks very fast...but it fits the story...the main character is very manic...
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
They should not make a movie of the book...maybe a documentary?
Any additional comments?
** I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review **
First off I must say this is very poetically written in a sad reaching out for help manner...It is about a very sad girl, who desperately needs help. She is starving herself, and wants others to hurt her...she does not feel worthy of living and she is taking control of her life by being very destructive of herself...She starves herself, takes diet pills, only drinks coffee and redbull...sometimes water.barely eats at all, and when she does she vomits...she rarely sleeps...and her boyfriend is an alcoholic...he tries to help her, but he is very messed up also...I think she may have died at the end...its kind of not specified...I could not listen to this all at once..I could feel this girls grief and had to walk away a few times...very heavy listen...
Thank You, Audiobookblast(dot)com
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- zoe
- 07-03-15
Binary Star
What was one of the most memorable moments of Binary Star?
Binary Star is a book in many ways an unsettling. It is an incredibly important one. Gerard's style pushes the boundaries and, like her characters, constantly seems about to go extreme.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Delia
- 06-04-15
Very interesting stream of consciousness novella
Which scene was your favorite?
I liked the imagery of driving through the desert.
Any additional comments?
This stream of consciousness narrative was really interesting. The writing style was unusual and very fluid. It was narrated by the author, and while you can tell she is not a professional narrator, I really cannot imagine someone else telling the story in a coherent way. I would highly suggest this, if you have any interest in flash fiction, short stories or beat writing.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Holly
- 06-02-15
Quick, Intense Listen
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Some friends.
What did you like best about this story?
The story feels extraordinarily personal. It's intense and powerful. It is a first-person stream of consciousness of a young woman struggling with anorexia, bulimia, and a dysfunctional, long-distance relationship with an alcoholic. It's not a light-listen by any definition. She TAs an astronomy class and the story mixes in star analogies with eating disorders and depression. Really interesting.
Have you listened to any of Sarah Gerard’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I have not. I don't think I would like hearing her perform anything but her own work. She doesn't give the characters distinct voices or anything. She isn't a professional narrator, but her voice was right for this story. The emotion and power came through in her performance. I enjoyed it.
1 person found this helpful
Related to this topic
-
Marlena
- A Novel
- By: Julie Buntin
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything about 15-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts - first drink, first cigarette, first kiss - while Marlena's habits harden and calcify.
-
-
A Brilliant, Agonizing Portrait of a Young Woman
- By Sudi on 06-06-17
By: Julie Buntin
-
The Gilded Razor
- A Memoir
- By: Sam Lansky
- Narrated by: Cole Ferguson
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life. By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out.
-
-
Annoying, Privileged Teenager Tells his Story
- By Michelle in New York City on 03-15-16
By: Sam Lansky
-
The Answer to the Riddle Is Me
- A Memoir of Amnesia
- By: David Stuart MacLean
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2002, at age 28, David MacLean woke up in a foreign land with his memory wiped clean. No money. No passport. No identity. Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics and scenes from television shows but not his family, his friends, or the woman he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he was taking. Upon hisreturn to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself.
-
-
fascinating story
- By Sadie on 08-22-15
-
The Perfect Liar
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Christopher Greene
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her 15-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. Strong-willed and attractive, Susannah expects her life is perfectly in place again. Then one quiet morning, she finds a note on her door: "I Know Who You Are." Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon, a second note appears on their door....
-
-
Honestly......
- By MA Reviewer on 01-20-19
-
Torch
- By: Cheryl Strayed
- Narrated by: Cheryl Strayed
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!" is the advice Teresa Rae Wood shares with the listeners of her local radio show, Modern Pioneers, and the advice she strives to live by every day. She has fled a bad marriage and rebuilt a life with her children, Claire and Joshua, and their caring stepfather, Bruce. Their love for each other binds them as a family through the daily struggles of making ends meet. But when they received unexpected news that Teresa, only 38, is dying of cancer, their lives all begin to unravel and drift apart.
-
-
Don't Listen to the Intro
- By Heather Humble on 02-08-17
By: Cheryl Strayed
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
-
-
I love it...
- By Claudia Gallegos on 07-12-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
Marlena
- A Novel
- By: Julie Buntin
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything about 15-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts - first drink, first cigarette, first kiss - while Marlena's habits harden and calcify.
-
-
A Brilliant, Agonizing Portrait of a Young Woman
- By Sudi on 06-06-17
By: Julie Buntin
-
The Gilded Razor
- A Memoir
- By: Sam Lansky
- Narrated by: Cole Ferguson
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life. By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out.
-
-
Annoying, Privileged Teenager Tells his Story
- By Michelle in New York City on 03-15-16
By: Sam Lansky
-
The Answer to the Riddle Is Me
- A Memoir of Amnesia
- By: David Stuart MacLean
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2002, at age 28, David MacLean woke up in a foreign land with his memory wiped clean. No money. No passport. No identity. Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics and scenes from television shows but not his family, his friends, or the woman he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he was taking. Upon hisreturn to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself.
-
-
fascinating story
- By Sadie on 08-22-15
-
The Perfect Liar
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Christopher Greene
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her 15-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. Strong-willed and attractive, Susannah expects her life is perfectly in place again. Then one quiet morning, she finds a note on her door: "I Know Who You Are." Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon, a second note appears on their door....
-
-
Honestly......
- By MA Reviewer on 01-20-19
-
Torch
- By: Cheryl Strayed
- Narrated by: Cheryl Strayed
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!" is the advice Teresa Rae Wood shares with the listeners of her local radio show, Modern Pioneers, and the advice she strives to live by every day. She has fled a bad marriage and rebuilt a life with her children, Claire and Joshua, and their caring stepfather, Bruce. Their love for each other binds them as a family through the daily struggles of making ends meet. But when they received unexpected news that Teresa, only 38, is dying of cancer, their lives all begin to unravel and drift apart.
-
-
Don't Listen to the Intro
- By Heather Humble on 02-08-17
By: Cheryl Strayed
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
-
-
I love it...
- By Claudia Gallegos on 07-12-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
Loud in the House of Myself
- Memoir of a Strange Girl
- By: Stacy Pershall
- Narrated by: Stacy Pershall
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.
-
-
Short, but Intense Memoir
- By Lindsay on 06-19-13
By: Stacy Pershall
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Abridged=Horrible
- By Kelly on 05-05-13
By: Marya Hornbacher
-
Shit Cassandra Saw
- Stories
- By: Gwen E. Kirby
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Sura Siu, Rob Shapiro, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers.
-
-
Delightful collection of feminist short stories
- By SB on 01-13-22
By: Gwen E. Kirby
-
Homesick for Another World
- Stories
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.
-
-
Funny, Dynamic Writing
- By Sofia Macht on 06-13-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
All the Names They Used for God
- Stories
- By: Anjali Sachdeva
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Zainab Jah, Will Damron, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a secret, subterranean world beneath the prairie of the Old West, a homesteader risks her life in search of a safe haven. A workman in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills is turned into a medical oddity by the brutal power of the furnaces. A young woman created through genetic manipulation is destroyed by the same force that gave her life. With her distinctive blend of magical realism, science, and poetic prose, Anjali Sachdeva demonstrates a preternatural ability to laser in on our fears, our hopes, and our longings in order to point out intrinsic truths about society and humanity.
-
-
Astoundingly fresh and just so GOOD
- By Dana on 07-20-18
By: Anjali Sachdeva
-
The Sarah Book
- By: Scott McClanahan
- Narrated by: Scott McClanahan
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Sarah Book is Scott McClanahan's continuation of the semi-autobiographical portrait he's been writing over the years about his life in West Virginia. This one is his portrait of love.
-
-
BEST BOOK YOU'LL READ ALL YEAR
- By Tal on 10-05-17
By: Scott McClanahan
-
I Swear I'll Make It Up to You
- A Life on the Low Road
- By: Mishka Shubaly
- Narrated by: Mishka Shubaly
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A misfit kid at the best of times, Mishka Shubaly had his world shattered when, in a 24-hour span in 1992, he survived a mass shooting on his school's campus then learned that his parents were getting divorced. His father, a prominent rocket scientist, abandoned the family, and their home was lost to foreclosure. Shubaly swore to avenge the wrongs against his mother but instead plunged into a magnificently toxic love affair with alcohol.
-
-
Blah, blah, blah...
- By B Hart on 08-29-16
By: Mishka Shubaly
-
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
-
-
Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
-
The Opposite of Loneliness
- Essays and Stories
- By: Marina Keegan
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Even though she was just 22 when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation.
-
-
Probably buy the book too.
- By Soupergirl on 09-14-15
By: Marina Keegan
-
Stranger Here
- How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head
- By: Jen Larsen
- Narrated by: Dani Cervone
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stranger Here is the brutally honest, surprisingly hilarious story of one woman's journey from one extreme of the weight spectrum to the other, and of the unexpected emotional chaos it created. Insightful and unsparing in her self-examination, Larsen depicts the exhilarating highs and devastating lows she experienced as a result of her weight loss, the incredible joy of finally beginning to look like the image of herself she's always carried inside her head, and the crushing pain and confusion of feeling like a stranger in her own body after losing the weight that has always defined her.
-
-
Good book with some disappointments
- By Ina Landry on 04-22-18
By: Jen Larsen
-
Happy Family
- By: Tracy Barone
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1962 a pregnant girl staggers into a health clinic, gives birth, and flees. A foster family takes the baby in, and an unlikely couple, their lives unspooling from the recent death of their infant, adopts her. Forty years and many secrets and lies later, Cheri Matzner is all grown up and falling apart. Ironic and fierce, she's a former cop turned disgruntled academic, a frustrated wife trying to get pregnant, an iconoclastic daughter bearing war wounds from her dysfunctional family.
-
-
excellent
- By Marie E on 06-05-16
By: Tracy Barone