-
Nothing with Strings
- NPR's Beloved Holiday Stories
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

pick 2 free titles with trial.
Buy for $12.17
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Boom Town
- A Lake Wobegon Novel
- By: Garrison Keillor
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Return to America’s most beloved fictional hometown! Lake Wobegon is having a boom year thanks to millennial entrepreneurship—AuntMildred’s.com Gourmet Meatloaf, for example, or Universal Fire, makers of artisanal firewood seasoned with sea salt. Meanwhile, the author flies in to give eulogies at the funerals of five classmates, including a couple whom he disliked, and he finds a wave of narcissism crashing on the rocks of Lutheran stoicism.
-
-
Hope you aren't conservative in any way.
- By Thomas S. Ashton on 04-27-22
By: Garrison Keillor
-
The Speckled Beauty
- A Dog and His People
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrated by: Rick Bragg
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog.
-
-
Finest Book on Audible, Bar None (imho)
- By Mary Burnight on 08-12-22
By: Rick Bragg
-
Masked Ball at Broxley Manor
- A Royal Spyness Novella
- By: Rhys Bowen
- Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.
-
-
Fun, light prequel
- By CMMV on 01-01-15
By: Rhys Bowen
-
All Over But the Shoutin'
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrated by: Rick Bragg
- Length: 2 hrs and 41 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most.
-
-
ABRIDGED
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-16
By: Rick Bragg
-
At Home in Mitford
- A Novel
- By: Jan Karon
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's 60 years old.
-
-
Loved it
- By Sara on 01-29-14
By: Jan Karon
-
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
- By: Jesse Q. Sutanto
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vera Wong is a lonely little lady of a certain age who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to. Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. After calling the cops like any good citizen, she swipes the flash drive. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could.
-
-
So far,surprisingly charming-OUTSTANDING narration
- By Christine T on 03-20-23
By: Jesse Q. Sutanto
-
Boom Town
- A Lake Wobegon Novel
- By: Garrison Keillor
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Return to America’s most beloved fictional hometown! Lake Wobegon is having a boom year thanks to millennial entrepreneurship—AuntMildred’s.com Gourmet Meatloaf, for example, or Universal Fire, makers of artisanal firewood seasoned with sea salt. Meanwhile, the author flies in to give eulogies at the funerals of five classmates, including a couple whom he disliked, and he finds a wave of narcissism crashing on the rocks of Lutheran stoicism.
-
-
Hope you aren't conservative in any way.
- By Thomas S. Ashton on 04-27-22
By: Garrison Keillor
-
The Speckled Beauty
- A Dog and His People
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrated by: Rick Bragg
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog.
-
-
Finest Book on Audible, Bar None (imho)
- By Mary Burnight on 08-12-22
By: Rick Bragg
-
Masked Ball at Broxley Manor
- A Royal Spyness Novella
- By: Rhys Bowen
- Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.
-
-
Fun, light prequel
- By CMMV on 01-01-15
By: Rhys Bowen
-
All Over But the Shoutin'
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrated by: Rick Bragg
- Length: 2 hrs and 41 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most.
-
-
ABRIDGED
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-16
By: Rick Bragg
-
At Home in Mitford
- A Novel
- By: Jan Karon
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's 60 years old.
-
-
Loved it
- By Sara on 01-29-14
By: Jan Karon
-
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
- By: Jesse Q. Sutanto
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vera Wong is a lonely little lady of a certain age who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to. Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. After calling the cops like any good citizen, she swipes the flash drive. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could.
-
-
So far,surprisingly charming-OUTSTANDING narration
- By Christine T on 03-20-23
By: Jesse Q. Sutanto
-
Bloodroot
- By: Amy Greene
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver, Kirby Heyborne, Jessie Bernstein, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies - of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss - that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today. The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path.
-
-
Amazing story
- By MJ on 02-16-10
By: Amy Greene
-
These Precious Days
- Essays
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.
-
-
Heartfelt Essays, Beautifully Performed
- By Brent Holcomb on 11-23-21
By: Ann Patchett
-
James Herriot's Favorite Dog Stories
- By: James Herriot
- Narrated by: Christopher Timothy
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This enchanting program collects some of the Yorkshire vet's favorite stories about one of his favorite animals, each tale as memorable and heartwarming as the last...
-
-
If you have the other Herriott books, don't bother
- By Laurana on 10-27-14
By: James Herriot
-
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
- A Miss Marple Collection
- By: Agatha Christie
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miss Marple: The Complete Story Collection gathers together in one magnificent volume all of Agatha Christie’s short stories featuring her beloved intrepid investigator, Miss Marple. It’s an unparalleled compendium of murder, mayhem, mystery, and detection that represents some of the finest short form fiction in the crime fiction field, and is an essential omnibus for Christie fans.
-
-
Classic Miss Marple - uneven narration
- By Lyric G. Eads on 11-09-22
By: Agatha Christie
-
Lady Clementine
- A Novel
- By: Marie Benedict
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband. Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.
-
-
Not a fan
- By Chris Hedges on 02-18-20
By: Marie Benedict
-
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
- Monk & Robot, Book 1
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Em Grosland
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
-
-
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
- By Daniel Cascaddan on 07-15-21
By: Becky Chambers
-
Bel Canto
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
-
-
Opera Has Charms to Soothe the Savage Guerillas
- By Mel on 03-01-13
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Librarian Spy
- A Novel of World War II
- By: Madeline Martin
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It's a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.
-
-
Good story, disturbing narration.
- By John on 09-22-22
By: Madeline Martin
-
The Wind in the Willows
- By: Kenneth Grahame, Dina Gregory
- Narrated by: Cush Jumbo, Harriet Walter, Aimee Lou Wood, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Lady Toad, Mistress Badger, Miss Water Rat and Mrs Mole as they go about their adventures, messing around on the river, gallivanting in Lady Toad’s shiny new toy and fighting valiantly to save Toad Hall from unruly squatters. In this retelling by Dina Gregory, The Wind in the Willows becomes a story about a group of female animals to be admired for their close sisterhood and fierce independence. Featuring original music and songs by Rosabella Gregory and sound effects captured on location, put your headphones on, sit back and lose yourself in the British countryside.
-
-
Not the original story
- By Pious on 03-02-21
By: Kenneth Grahame, and others
-
Big Stone Gap
- A Novel
- By: Adriana Trigiani
- Narrated by: Adriana Trigiani
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1978, and Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She’s also the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the Rescue Squad, and the director of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the town’s long-running Outdoor Drama.
-
-
Italy meets Appalachia . . . Gotta Love It!!!
- By Debbie on 02-22-14
By: Adriana Trigiani
-
Bunburry 1-3
- A Cosy Mystery Compilation
- By: Helena Marchmont
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Parker
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In "Murder at the Mousetrap," the first Bunburry book, fudge-making and quaffing real ale in the local pub are matched by an undercurrent of passion, jealousy, hatred and murder - laced with a welcome dose of humour. Alfie McAlister has retreated from London to the peace and quiet of the country to recover from a personal tragedy. But an accidental death - which may have been no accident - reveals that the heart of England is far from the tranquil backwater he imagined.
-
-
Lovely, sweet story and superb narration
- By Laura Stone on 01-19-20
By: Helena Marchmont
-
The Secret Life of Bees
- By: Sue Monk Kidd
- Narrated by: Jenna Lamia
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed.
-
-
Awesome narrator
- By Joey on 05-17-10
By: Sue Monk Kidd
Publisher's summary
More from the same
What listeners love about Nothing with Strings
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- Mary
- 12-31-08
A real jewel.
Bailey White is a master of the craft. Again, wonderful story writing as only Bailey can do it. Lorna Raver somehow puts it all together and breaths life into the story. You can really feel and live the stories. This is true treasure to keep in my audio library to listen to again and again. Bailey White can always be enjoyed and will never grow dull or out of date. This is a true classic just like a favorite pair of jeans.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- MissSusie66
- 12-22-11
Touching Short Stories
This was a neat collection of southern short stories I’m not sure why they say they are holiday themed because really they’re not, but good none the less. I would say the theme is aging & gardening, southern style.
Some of these stories were sad/touching, some were funny, most were both but all left me wanting more. Just a warning these aren’t happy stories but they are good stories I would recommend this for southern fiction lovers.
I listened to this one on audio narrated by, Lorna Raver who as always does a great job.
3 ½ Stars
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- bruce
- 12-12-11
Would not recommend
What disappointed you about Nothing with Strings?
Could not tell when one short story started and one ended
I thought they would be Christmas stories, they were not...
All very depressing
Would not recommend to ANYONE
Horrible!!!
We read it as a book club and it was unanimous
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
The voices were not BAD
Any additional comments?
I am surprised NPR would put these out
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kim
- 04-13-21
whimsical storytelling at its finest
I fell in love with Bailey White years ago when my daughter and I read Mama Makes Up Her Mind aloud together. since that time, we have both been avid fans, and this book doesn't disappoint. What a delight to be able to listen to this book, chock full of whimsy, and lots of fun. Ms Whites books are best shared aloud with family and friends. No matter where you grow up, she brings out the southern lady hidden within us all. Listening to any of her books is time well spent, and will create a cherished memory between you and the people you share it with. I hope one day Audible will offer what my daughter and I affectionately call " the Mama book." until then, enjoy this little gem.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Teresa
- 02-13-12
Wonderful narration!
Southern culture is heard here in these wonderful stories by Bailey White. I heard it first on NPR.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Leslie D.
- 11-15-11
Strange Collection
These were odd stories, and an even stranger narrator. Hard to listen to, but then I can't complain - it was free!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lili
- 08-18-23
Not the best Bailey White book
I love Bailey White's earlier books, have them on my bookshelf. I wish Audible would produce audio versions of those books. But this book by contrast is a disappointment. The stories are, hmmm, odd? Some are kinda sad, some end abruptly, and some are just like, why?
I could live with that, but it's the narration that takes the whole enterprise down. I'm sorry, I love a good southern accent more than most people, but this lady, Lorna Raver, is so over the top with her accent it's like she's doing a parody of a southern accent.
Audible, please produce Bailey White's earlier books Mama Makes Up Her Mind, and Quite a Year for Plums. And get Helen Ellis or Rick Bragg to narrate, because they know their way around fabulous southern accents. Thx.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- D. J. F.
- 12-21-22
Southern charm
These are exquisite and sharply etched short stories, evoking small-town life in the American South with wit and nostalgia.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
Related to this topic
-
Like Family
- Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir
- By: Paula McLain
- Narrated by: Wendy Tremont King
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.
-
-
A famous writer describes her life growing up in foster care
- By Nancy C. on 12-21-18
By: Paula McLain
-
Running on Red Dog Road
- And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood
- By: Drema Hall Berkheimer
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.
-
-
Nostalgia.....
- By Leah on 11-27-17
-
Promise
- A Novel
- By: Minrose Gwin
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart - one Black, one White; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager - fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel.
-
-
Mostly Disappointing
- By Anjoli on 06-15-19
By: Minrose Gwin
-
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat, Jessica Almasy, Victor Bevine, and others
- Length: 32 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This complete collection includes all of the published stories of Eudora Welty. There are 41 stories in all, including those in the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected stories.
-
-
Too Good For Audio
- By Yennta on 06-18-12
By: Eudora Welty
-
Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
-
-
MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
-
The Rock Orchard
- By: Paula Wall
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Some women can touch a man and heal like Jesus. The man who sees sunrise from a Belle woman's bed will swear he's been born again." So begins Paula Wall's funny, poignant, and sexy novel, The Rock Orchard. Musette Belle could lay her hand on a baby's heart and see his life as if he'd already lived it. Even in death, she continues to shock the good citizens of Leaper's Fork, Tennessee, and her descendents are doing their best to carry on her legacy.
-
-
Laugh Out Loud
- By MaryRoseJ on 11-06-12
By: Paula Wall
-
Like Family
- Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir
- By: Paula McLain
- Narrated by: Wendy Tremont King
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.
-
-
A famous writer describes her life growing up in foster care
- By Nancy C. on 12-21-18
By: Paula McLain
-
Running on Red Dog Road
- And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood
- By: Drema Hall Berkheimer
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.
-
-
Nostalgia.....
- By Leah on 11-27-17
-
Promise
- A Novel
- By: Minrose Gwin
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart - one Black, one White; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager - fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel.
-
-
Mostly Disappointing
- By Anjoli on 06-15-19
By: Minrose Gwin
-
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat, Jessica Almasy, Victor Bevine, and others
- Length: 32 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This complete collection includes all of the published stories of Eudora Welty. There are 41 stories in all, including those in the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected stories.
-
-
Too Good For Audio
- By Yennta on 06-18-12
By: Eudora Welty
-
Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
-
-
MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
-
The Rock Orchard
- By: Paula Wall
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Some women can touch a man and heal like Jesus. The man who sees sunrise from a Belle woman's bed will swear he's been born again." So begins Paula Wall's funny, poignant, and sexy novel, The Rock Orchard. Musette Belle could lay her hand on a baby's heart and see his life as if he'd already lived it. Even in death, she continues to shock the good citizens of Leaper's Fork, Tennessee, and her descendents are doing their best to carry on her legacy.
-
-
Laugh Out Loud
- By MaryRoseJ on 11-06-12
By: Paula Wall
-
Owls Do Cry
- By: Janet Frame
- Narrated by: Heather Bolton
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Owls Do Cry is one of the classics of New Zealand literature, and has remained in print continuously for 50 years. A fiftieth anniversary edition was published in 2007.
-
-
well told but a wee bit depressing.
- By Muzza on 11-03-19
By: Janet Frame
-
The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
-
-
Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Other Voices, Other Rooms
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Cody Roberts
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
-
-
medium
- By Jody on 09-14-23
By: Truman Capote
-
Memphis
- A Novel
- By: Tara M. Stringfellow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray, Adenrele Ojo, Tara Stringfellow
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.
-
-
Awful narrator
- By Rachael edwards on 06-07-22
-
Caramelo
- By: Sandra Cisneros
- Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip - a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels - from Chicago to “the other side”, Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next.
-
-
Love, family, history, and fantasy, Caramelo
- By Michele on 08-07-20
By: Sandra Cisneros
-
Battleborn
- By: Claire Vaye Watkins
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Morgan Hallett, Laura Knight Keating, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.
-
-
Wonderful magnificent stories beautifully told
- By Pedro Ramirez on 12-03-15
-
The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
By: Joy Williams
-
The Twelve-Mile Straight
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Henderson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
-
-
Great read!
- By S. Clay on 11-01-17