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In 1944, 23-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II. Tess' new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows no interest in making love. Tess quickly realizes she's trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.
Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He's also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X. Evan broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear.
LAPD cop Scott James is not doing so well, not since a shocking nighttime assault by unidentified men killed his partner, Stephanie, nearly killed him, and left him enraged, ashamed, and ready to explode. He is unfit for duty - until he meets his new partner. Maggie is not doing so well, either. The German shepherd survived three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing explosives before she lost her handler to an IED and sniper attack, and her PTSD is as bad as Scott’s. They are each other’s last chance.
I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to 13 years ago. I've spent a long time peering into the faces of girls on missing posters, wondering which one replaced me in that basement. But they were never quite the right age, with the right look, in the right circumstances. Until Olivia Shaw, missing for one week tomorrow.
They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer...wrong. Louisa's new best friend has it all - the house, the status, the money. But she's also hiding a dark secret. And as Louisa is drawn deeper into her friend's life, events take a chilling turn.
You think you know the truth about the people you love. But one discovery can change everything.... Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister Rose. Two days later he is found dead. Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy's death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother? Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life.
In 1944, 23-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II. Tess' new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows no interest in making love. Tess quickly realizes she's trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.
Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He's also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X. Evan broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear.
LAPD cop Scott James is not doing so well, not since a shocking nighttime assault by unidentified men killed his partner, Stephanie, nearly killed him, and left him enraged, ashamed, and ready to explode. He is unfit for duty - until he meets his new partner. Maggie is not doing so well, either. The German shepherd survived three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing explosives before she lost her handler to an IED and sniper attack, and her PTSD is as bad as Scott’s. They are each other’s last chance.
I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to 13 years ago. I've spent a long time peering into the faces of girls on missing posters, wondering which one replaced me in that basement. But they were never quite the right age, with the right look, in the right circumstances. Until Olivia Shaw, missing for one week tomorrow.
They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer...wrong. Louisa's new best friend has it all - the house, the status, the money. But she's also hiding a dark secret. And as Louisa is drawn deeper into her friend's life, events take a chilling turn.
You think you know the truth about the people you love. But one discovery can change everything.... Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister Rose. Two days later he is found dead. Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy's death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother? Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life.
Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the South's antebellum opulence and to its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction. Weaving her own family's oral history with 30 years of research, Margaret Walker's novel brings the everyday experiences of slaves to light. Jubilee churns with the hunger, the hymns, the struggles, and the very breath of American history.
Meet Michael Blutrich, mild-mannered New York lawyer and founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York City history, funded by the proceeds of an insurance embezzlement scheme. All Blutrich wanted was to lay low, make the club a success, and put his criminal acts behind him. But the Mafia got involved, and soon the FBI came knocking. Scores became wildly popular, in part thanks to Blutrich's ability to successfully bend the rules of adult entertainment. Unfortunately for Blutrich, it would all soon implode.
For DEA Special Agent Marshall Everett, life as he knows it is over once a gunshot wound renders his arm useless. Barred forever from the undercover work he loves, he has nothing - no close friends, no family, no hometown or base, and no desire to settle for life behind a desk. He's called to action in the most unlikely of places when he stumbles upon a beautiful girl burying an old steel box in a Parisian park.
To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont with two big mutts and a grown daughter he keeps in touch with by phone. But most 60-year-old widowers don't have multiple driver's licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run.
From the internationally acclaimed best-selling author of Code Name Verity comes a stunning new story of pearls, love and murder. Sixteen-year-old Julie Beaufort-Stuart is returning to her family's ancestral home in Perthshire for one last summer. It is not an idyllic return to childhood. Her grandfather's death has forced the sale of the house and estate, and this will be a summer of good-byes. Not least to the McEwen family - Highland travellers who have been part of the landscape for as long as anyone can remember.
Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are both high school seniors in the small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. When they disappear from a beach party one warm summer night, police launch a massive search. No clues are found, and hope is almost lost until Megan miraculously surfaces after escaping from a bunker deep in the woods. A year later the best-selling account of her ordeal has turned Megan from local hero to national celebrity.
At the age of 13, Charlie Quinn's childhood came to an abrupt and devastating end. Two men, with a grudge against her lawyer father, broke into Charlie's home - and after that shocking night, her world was never the same. Now a lawyer herself, Charlie has made it her mission to defend those with no one else to turn to.
Eve Hardaway, newly single mother of one, is on a trip she’s long dreamed of - a rafting and hiking tour through the jungles and mountains of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. Eve wanders off the trail, to a house in the distance with a menacing man in the yard beyond it, throwing machetes at a human-shaped target. Disturbed by the sight, Eve moves quickly and quietly back to her group, taking care to avoid being seen. As she creeps along, she finds a broken digital camera, marked with the name Teresa Hamilton.
Secrets told in the church ladies' room are supposed to stay in the ladies' room. But that doesn't mean that what Trudy overhears there during her great-aunt Gertrude's funeral won't change the rest of her life. Trudy has a daughter in the middle of a major rebellion; a two-timing husband who has been cheating for their entire married life; and a mother with Alzheimer's residing in the local nursing home.
Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep. When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night.
In teeming Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty live side by side, Edward Pierce charms the most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the century. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the daring theft of a fortune in gold? Who could predict the consequences of making the extraordinary robbery aboard the pride of England's industrial era, the mighty steam locomotive?
Ten years ago college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie-scale massacre. In an instant she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to - a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls.
In a Japan still rigid with tradition, an apprehensive 15-year-old tea-house girl prepares to welcome her first client. In his gleaming white uniform, Lieutenant Pinkerton walks up the hill to a house in Nagasaki to find the female he has purchased for a few weeks. When he sails away, she waits, aching for his return. It is one of the world’s great love stories. And, as the curtain falls on Madame Butterfly, Cho-Cho hands over her son to his American father, before killing herself... In a daring imaginative leap, Lee Langley takes this searing moment as a springboard, sending Puccini’s characters spinning into a future undreamed of in the original.
I listened to about 75% of this book and then I just stopped. There was no happy in the book, and I didn't care what happened next. The reader was pleasant and did a great job. I don't think it is a bad book, but I found it all depressing with a hopeless feeling. Just not for me.
50 of 54 people found this review helpful
Beautiful,bittersweet story, of family, loss, and love. Not drama drama drama, just heroic and heartbreaking. The piece gives you a snapshot of WWII, Japan's culture clash with American GI's, and the strength of women. I'd recommend this to anyone, the writing and reader are both very well done. I am amazed I got it for $5, it goes into my favorites pile.
18 of 19 people found this review helpful
What made the experience of listening to Butterfly's Shadow the most enjoyable?
This is a beautiful, sad, and very plausible story. The author brings us back and forth from Japan to the USA smoothly, and shows us the complex relationships that are formed with WW11 in the background.
What other book might you compare Butterfly's Shadow to and why?
I also enjoyed Shanghai Girls and The Last Train from Hiroshima. It reminds me some of Snow Falling on Cedars.
Which scene was your favorite?
The son's return trip to Japan
Any additional comments?
Maybe this would make a good movie!!
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
I have enjoyed this genre and culture before but this book did not reach the level of those previously read. Certainly it is not reasonable to compare it to something like Memoir of a Geisha as it doesn't come close. But it isn't a bad choice.
The characters are developed, but they are not complete in their development. In fact, I think that is where the problem originates. We hear a lot about Cho-Cho, Pinkerton, and Nancy. But none of that was enough. It was not until the end of the story that Joey is featured. And at that point, it really is too late. Each of thse characters could have been the primary focus of the book and it would have been fine. Tryng to make them all the focus dilutes their value.
The narration was adequate. Her Japanese voices were acceptable, but her narration of Pinkerton was awful. It just did not ring true to his character.
And that was another main glitch: what was his charater about? Was he as Shapeless felt: a crass self-centered man? Worthy of either Nancy or Cho Cho's love? Did Nancy even truly love him? There were many fragments not answered by the tale, left hanging.
Overall, it wasn't a bad listen but it certainly could have been a lot better.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes
If the author had written with about 4 or 5 chapters less, then it would have been much more enjoyable.
Have you listened to any of Laurel Lefkow’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Too long for one sitting
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I would definitely tell othes to read this wonderful story.very real and heartbreaking.
What did you like best about this story?
I love when fiction is close to reality, and when it shows me a glimpse of other cultures and this did both of those things.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Its not suspenseful, yet you are sad when it is over
Any additional comments?
This has been my favorite novel from audible do far, not one I will soon forget
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
Where does Butterfly's Shadow rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Fifth
What was one of the most memorable moments of Butterfly's Shadow?
Dignity of the heroine (I don't want to spoil the story for others)
What does Laurel Lefkow bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Excellent characterization
Who was the most memorable character of Butterfly's Shadow and why?
Chocho
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
An easy listen with minor historical input woven into the storyline.
Touching and endearing characters which you feel you know personally by the end of the book.
I would definitely have a look at other books by this author
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
One of those books that you don't want to end and you feel like you've got to know the characters
7 of 9 people found this review helpful
Is there anything you would change about this book?
It feels unfinished. We learned a lot about the characters but their individual stories didn't really mesh together for me.
In a Japan still rigid with tradition, an apprehensive 15-year-old tea-house girl prepares to welcome her first client. In his gleaming white uniform, Lieutenant Pinkerton walks up the hill to a house in Nagasaki to find the female he has purchased for a few weeks. When he sails away, she waits, aching for his return. It is one of the world’s great love stories. And, as the curtain falls on Madame Butterfly, Cho-Cho hands over her son to his American father, before killing herself... In a daring imaginative leap, Lee Langley takes this searing moment as a springboard, sending Puccini’s characters spinning into a future undreamed of in the original.
If you’ve listened to books by Lee Langley before, how does this one compare?
No, but her performance was good.
Was Butterfly's Shadow worth the listening time?
Yes & no - I listened to it twice but do not think I'll listen again.
Any additional comments?
I bought this on sale and am happy with the purchase. I do not feel it is a good buy at full price or using a credit.
11 of 15 people found this review helpful