-
Polar Vortex
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Lewis Sharon, Iris Quinn
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Premium Plus
$14.95 a month
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Here the Dark
- By: David Bergen
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the streets of Danang, Vietnam, where a boy falls in with a young American missionary, to fishermen lost off the islands of Honduras, to the Canadian prairies, where a teenage boys infatuation reveals his naiveté and an aging rancher finds himself smitten, the short stories in Here the Dark explore the spaces between doubt and belief, evil and good, obscurity and light.
By: David Bergen
-
The Prophets
- By: Robert Jones Jr.
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man - a fellow slave - seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own.
-
-
lyrical
- By Barbara S on 01-16-21
By: Robert Jones Jr.
-
When No One Is Watching
- A Thriller
- By: Alyssa Cole
- Narrated by: Susan Dalian, Jay Aaseng
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block - her neighbor, Theo. But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear.
-
-
Good Story
- By Queen Dee on 09-06-20
By: Alyssa Cole
-
Luster
- A Novel
- By: Raven Leilani
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s - sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage - with rules.
-
-
Spellbinding
- By Nana on 08-07-20
By: Raven Leilani
-
You Exist Too Much
- A Novel
- By: Zaina Arafat
- Narrated by: Zehra Jane Naqvi
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the US and the Middle East, we trace her progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer.
-
-
Meh - didn't care about the character in the end
- By JL on 11-03-20
By: Zaina Arafat
-
The Glass Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events - the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.
-
-
Not a mystery
- By Sandi from Oregon on 03-28-20
-
Here the Dark
- By: David Bergen
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the streets of Danang, Vietnam, where a boy falls in with a young American missionary, to fishermen lost off the islands of Honduras, to the Canadian prairies, where a teenage boys infatuation reveals his naiveté and an aging rancher finds himself smitten, the short stories in Here the Dark explore the spaces between doubt and belief, evil and good, obscurity and light.
By: David Bergen
-
The Prophets
- By: Robert Jones Jr.
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man - a fellow slave - seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own.
-
-
lyrical
- By Barbara S on 01-16-21
By: Robert Jones Jr.
-
When No One Is Watching
- A Thriller
- By: Alyssa Cole
- Narrated by: Susan Dalian, Jay Aaseng
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block - her neighbor, Theo. But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear.
-
-
Good Story
- By Queen Dee on 09-06-20
By: Alyssa Cole
-
Luster
- A Novel
- By: Raven Leilani
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s - sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage - with rules.
-
-
Spellbinding
- By Nana on 08-07-20
By: Raven Leilani
-
You Exist Too Much
- A Novel
- By: Zaina Arafat
- Narrated by: Zehra Jane Naqvi
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the US and the Middle East, we trace her progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer.
-
-
Meh - didn't care about the character in the end
- By JL on 11-03-20
By: Zaina Arafat
-
The Glass Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events - the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.
-
-
Not a mystery
- By Sandi from Oregon on 03-28-20
-
How to Pronounce Knife
- Stories
- By: Souvankham Thammavongsa
- Narrated by: James Tang, Kulap Vilaysack
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences. Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this - moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language.
-
-
Thought provoking great little listen with sexual
- By McSusie on 09-29-20
-
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
- By: Andrea Lawlor
- Narrated by: Dani Martineck
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1993, and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flaneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: He's a shape-shifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Paul transforms his body and his gender at will as he crosses the country - a journey and adventure through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.
-
-
The Hottest Book Ever Written
- By Dawn on 06-28-19
By: Andrea Lawlor
-
The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
-
-
My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
-
Less
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: Your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes - it would be too awkward - and you can't say no - it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all.
-
-
Endearing, funny, but sometimes overly clever
- By Lili on 07-30-17
-
The City We Became
- By: N. K. Jemisin
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.
-
-
I don't understand the hype
- By Joe on 04-13-20
By: N. K. Jemisin
-
Piranesi
- By: Susanna Clarke
- Narrated by: Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell transported countless listeners into its mysterious world. It became an instant classic and has been hailed as one of the finest works of fiction of the 21st century. Fifteen years later, it is finally time to enter the House and meet Piranesi. May your paths be safe and your floors unbroken, and may the house fill your eyes with Beauty.
-
-
Strange & Pointless
- By Mark on 09-17-20
By: Susanna Clarke
-
The Devil All the Time
- By: Donald Ray Pollock
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.”
-
-
Good But Rough
- By Richard on 12-19-11
-
Kindred
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Kim Staunton
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes she's been given a challenge.
-
-
The Past of Slavery Still Moves and Wounds Us
- By Jefferson on 12-05-10
-
Caste (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
-
-
Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
There There
- A Novel
- By: Tommy Orange
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Ceurvo, and others
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle's death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle's memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and will perform in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and loss.
-
-
A gorgeous, white-hot debut
- By Kat - Audible on 06-12-18
By: Tommy Orange
-
Wolf Hall
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Simon Slater
- Length: 24 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political powerEngland in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn.
-
-
Divorced, beheaded, died...
- By Tim on 09-30-11
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Deacon King Kong
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By Linda G McDonough on 05-17-20
By: James McBride
Publisher's Summary
A novel reminiscent of the works of Herman Koch and Rachel Cusk, in which a lesbian couple attempts to escape the secrets of their pasts.
Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize!
"A tantalizing mix of psychological thriller and literary fiction.... Mootoo brilliantly explores white discourse about queer sexuality and identity, refugee experiences, the triple effects of sexism, racism, and homophobia on queer women of color, and more." (Autostraddle, included in 65 Queer and Feminist Books Coming Your Way in Fall 2020)
"A slow-burning examination of identity, gender, desire, and immigration.... Mootoo's subtle, thought-provoking tale stands out among stories of characters gripped by the past." (Publishers Weekly)
"Compellingly charts the complexity of human relationships, the illusions of memory, and the corrosive power of denial." (Kirkus Reviews)
Polar Vortex is a seductive and tension-filled novel about Priya and Alex, a lesbian couple who left the big city to relocate to a bucolic countryside community. It seemed like a good way to leave their past behind and cement their newish, later-in-life relationship. But there's leaving the past behind - and then there's running away from awkward histories.
Priya has a secret - a long-standing, on-again, off-again relationship with a man, Prakash. In Priya's mind, Prakash is little more than an old friend, but in reality things are a bit complicated. Why has she never told Alex about him? Prakash has tracked Priya down in her new life, and before she realizes what she's doing, she invites him to visit.
Alex is not pleased, and soon the existing cracks in their relationship widen, revealing secrets Alex herself would have preferred to keep. Into the fissure walks Prakash, whose own agenda forces all three to face the inevitable consequences of their choices.
Critic Reviews
"Polar Vortex is a powerful, fraught, and inventive exploration of the impossibility of ever really knowing the people we come to love. Told in urgent, incandescent prose and effortlessly spinning in and out of time, the book is an intimate and starkly honest examination of the complexities of sexual identity, lust, shame, regret, and how we, no matter where we come from or how we identify, are at our most complicated when it comes to the whims and failings of the human heart." (Joe Meno, author of Marvel and a Wonder)
"How to know the shifting pieces of ourselves, how to acknowledge contradictory desires, as we are pulled into the maelstrom of desire and memory? Shani Mootoo's intimate new novel suspends us in the vortex between acts of betrayal and acts of love. It is a powerfully unsettling work from a brilliant artist." (Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing)
"The past isn't even past - and the present is tense with conflicting desires and untold stories. What brings clarity to this setting is Shani Mootoo's limpid prose, clean and bracing. Polar Vortex is an honest, but also moving, exploration of true intimacy." (Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana)
"What a gorgeous and thrilling novel. Beautifully crafted, with perfect form and icy-clear tone - Shani Mootoo held me under her spell until the shock and release of the last page!" (Sarah Selecky, author of Radiant Shimmering Light)