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The Practical Heart
- Four Novellas
- Narrated by: Dan Cashman
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
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The Practical Heart
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Publisher's summary
In his fictional Falls, North Carolina - a watchful zone of stifling mores - Allan Gurganus’s fond and comical characters risk everything to protect their improbable hopes from prejudice, poverty, betrayal. Seeking warmth and true connection, they shield themselves and loved ones while creating a rarely-glimpsed world of valor, minor grandeur, side-street heroics.
Muriel Fraser, a poor Scottish-born spinster, is the subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait in the imagination of her devoted grand-nephew. Tad Worth, a young man dying of AIDS, finds ways to restore vitality to old friends and 18th century houses. Overnight, one pillar of the community, accused of child molesting, becomes the village pariah. And Clyde Delman, ugliest if kindest man in Falls, finds the love of his 8-year-old son jeopardized when troubling family secrets arise.
In each of these splendid complex tales, Allan Gurganus wrings truths - sometimes bruising, ofttimes warming - from human hearts as immense as they are local.
Critic reviews
2001, Lambda Literary Award, Winner
"As intriguing as it is deadly funny....An entertaining, disturbing, and inspiring book...[from] one of our greatest living raconteurs." (The Atlantic Monthly)
"This collection of four novellas places Gurganus in the pantheon of America's best storytellers." (Library Journal)
"Gurganus is an old-fashioned yarn spinner....[The Practical Heart] reanimates all those familiar truths about art's power to transform and redeem." (The New York Times)
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 200
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 179
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 178
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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Boy, Snow, Bird
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, Carra Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 639
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 571
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 575
In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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5 out of 5 stars
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For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Liberating Paris
- A Novel
- By: Linda Bloodworth Thomason
- Narrated by: Cynthia Darlow
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Woodrow McIlmore, the town's golden boy and local gynecologist, is married to his beautiful high school sweetheart, Milan, and seems by all appearances to be leading the perfect life with his two children and extended family and friends. But when Wood's daughter announces that she is smitten with a college classmate and intends to marry him, her parents are stunned.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Deeply moving, a great listen
- By Cynthia on 11-27-05
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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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Too Close to the Falls
- A Memoir
- By: Catherine Gildiner
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the middle of the 1950s in Lewiston, New York, a small and sleepy American town very near Niagara Falls. No one is divorced. Mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and children pop Pez candy and swing from vines over a local gorge. But at the tender age of four, it becomes clear to her Cathy's parents that their rambunctious daughter is no ordinary child and they soon put her "to work" at her father's pharmacy.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant and funny and touching.
- By Kindle Customer on 11-07-19
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 177
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 160
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Story4 out of 5 stars 160
Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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5 out of 5 stars
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,214
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 853
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 855
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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5 out of 5 stars
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 55
These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 368
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 329
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Story4 out of 5 stars 329
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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1 out of 5 stars
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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The Daisy Children
- A Novel
- By: Sofia Grant
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4 out of 5 stars 65
When Katie Garrett gets the news that she’s received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She flees Boston and travels to rural Texas. There, she’s greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly and flamboyant, Scarlett couldn’t be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their grandmother’s possessions, they discover letters and photographs that uncover the hidden truths about their shared history, and the long-forgotten tragedy of the New London school explosion of 1937 that binds them.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Hank’s voice is the same as the other male characters
- By Laura S on 03-24-24
By: Sofia Grant
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Summer at Willow Lake
- The Lakeshore Chronicles, Book 1
- By: Susan Wiggs
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 296
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 275
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 272
Real estate expert Olivia Bellamy reluctantly trades a trendy Manhattan summer for her family's old resort camp in the Catskills, where her primary task will be renovating the bungalow colony for her grandparents, who want one last summer together filled with fun, friends and family. A posh resort in its heyday, the camp is now in disarray and Olivia is forced to hire contractor Connor Davis - a still-smoldering flame from her own summers at camp.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Finding Love at Summer Camp
- By Pamela Dale Foster on 02-13-15
By: Susan Wiggs
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The Wednesday Sisters
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrated by: Julie Dretzin
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 170
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4 out of 5 stars 105
For 35 years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!
- By Denise Wallace on 06-26-09
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Georgia Bottoms
- A Novel
- By: Mark Childress
- Narrated by: Debra Monk
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4 out of 5 stars 118
A best-selling author of books for adults and children, Mark Childress pens his most outrageous work yet with Georgia Bottoms. The titular heroine is the epitome of the church-going Southern belle, except for one teeny-tiny aspect of her life. Georgia’s family inheritance has long since evaporated, and to maintain her genteel lifestyle, Miss Bottoms has taken six affluent lovers—the fly in the ointment being that one is a married preacher who’s about to reveal their infidelity to the whole congregation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fun Listen
- By Sue on 04-08-11
By: Mark Childress
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Middle C
- By: William H. Gass
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Gass’ new novel moves from World War II Europe to a small town in postwar Ohio. In a series of variations, Gass gives us a mosaic of a life - futile, comic, anarchic - arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms and tones, and broken pieces with music as both theme and structure, set in the key of middle C. It begins in Graz, Austria, 1938. Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland....
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4 out of 5 stars
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All the world was a stage. But not for all the wor
- By Darwin8u on 06-07-14
By: William H. Gass
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How to Be an American Housewife
- A Novel
- By: Margaret Dilloway
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington, Emily Durante
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 237
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 195
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Story4 out of 5 stars 196
How to Be an American Housewife is a novel about mothers and daughters and the pull of tradition. It tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and her grown daughter, Sue, a divorced mother whose life as an American housewife hasn't been what she'd expected. When illness prevents Shoko from traveling to Japan, she asks Sue to go in her place. The trip reveals family secrets that change their lives in dramatic and unforeseen ways.
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2 out of 5 stars
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big disappointment
- By Kirsten on 04-12-12
What listeners say about The Practical Heart
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- A+A
- 01-06-05
Choppy Writing and Sinking Interest
"The Practical Heart" has some fine writing, but also some awkward constructions and digressions that repeatedly chop up the flow of the stories.
The title story has a postmodern shift that distracted me and broke my emotional involvement with the main character. You're reading about a nephew writing about his aunt, then you learn the nephew was fictionalizing her life. The rest of the story is his true picture of her and their relationship, which is far less engaging.
In the second story, "Preservation News," the writing becomes even more precious and self-indulgent. Gurganus beats the reader over the head with forced whimsy.
For me the final straw came during the first conversation between a young historical preservationist and a widowed eastern North Carolina matron. Encouraging her to help with his work, he says, "You need to get your excellent, sinewy ass in gear, girl."
I'm from eastern North Carolina, I've met hundreds of matrons, and I have several gay friends, one of whom does historical preservation. I can assure you that Gurganus' line would never be spoken in the situation he presents. It was so absolutely phony that, coming after the book's other annoyances, I lost all interest in continuing.
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