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Precious Bane
- Narrated by: Maureen O'Sullivan, Dan O'Herlihy
- Length: 52 mins
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Precious Bane
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Set in rural Shropshire shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, Precious Bane is narrated by the central character, Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives the beauty of her character, but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Her brother, Gideon, is overridingly ambitious to attain wealth and power, regardless of who suffers while he does so.
Gideon is set to wed his sweetheart, Jancis, but he incurs the wrath of her father, the cruel and scheming self-proclaimed wizard Beguildy. An act of vengeance by Beguildy makes Gideon reject Jancis and tragedy overwhelms them both. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and set upon by a mob, but Kester defies them and carries Prue away to the happiness she believed she could never possess because of her harelip.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 215
Sara Stanley is only 14, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist. In the charming town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding narratives. And when Bev King and his younger brother, Felix, arrive for the summer, they, too, are captivated by the Story Girl.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Spring Always Comes
- By Joseph R on 01-07-10
By: L. M. Montgomery
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Laddie
- A True Blue Story
- By: Gene Stratton-Porter
- Narrated by: Laurie Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 165
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 168
This is a captivating, good-humored look at family life in a small farming community in Indiana in the early 1900s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An American Classic
- By Clint on 07-04-10
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Bless This House
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Michael Tudor Barnes, Nicolette McKenzie
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story5 out of 5 stars 29
The house was built in the Old Queen's time: built for an Elizabethan pirate who was knighted for the plunder he brought home. It survived many eras, many reigns: it saw the passing of Cromwell and the Civil War. It became rich with an Indian Nabob and poor with a 20th century innkeeper. It saw wars, and lovers, and death. Children were born there, both heirs and bastards. It had ghosts and legends and a history that grew stranger with every generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bless This House - my take
- By Kalona1982 on 04-05-09
By: Norah Lofts
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The Celtic Twilight
- By: William Butler Yeats
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 4 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 98
One of the best-known collections of W. B. Yeats' prose, The Celtic Twilight explores the old connection between the Irish people and the magical world of fairies. Yeats, by traveling the land in the early 20th century and talking to the common people about their experiences with the creatures, yielded a colorful overview of Celtic fairy folklore.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A compilation of Irish folklore in prose
- By MolllyT on 07-26-16
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Darby O'Gill and the Good People
- By: Herminie Templeton Kavanagh
- Narrated by: Anne Hancock
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
If the name seems familiar, these tales about Darby O'Gill and his encounter with the fairies were adapted for a Disney movie, Darby O'Gill and the Little People. They tell the story of an Irishman whose cow is captured by the fairies - or "good people". In his determination to recover his property, Darby finds himself in the center of their home, the mountain Sleive-na-mon.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I don’t know ...
- By Myztikal on 06-10-18
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The Town House
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Juliet Prague, Martyn Read
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
"It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me… the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father…” So began the story of Martin Reed - a serf whose resentment of the automatic rule of his feudal lord finally flared into open defiance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My favorite author
- By Karie on 07-09-15
By: Norah Lofts
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A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems
- By: Charles Dickens, L. M. Montgomery, Mark Twain, and others
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
During the hectic Christmas season, slow down with these heartwarming stories from some of literature’s most beloved writers. In this collection, listeners will discover lesser-known but tender stories and poems from classic authors they know and love. Each selection celebrates the beauty, mystery, and joy found in the season that commemorates Christ’s birth. A Vintage Christmas includes stories from Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and many more great writers....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful Audible Rendition
- By Sailor Family on 01-18-20
By: Charles Dickens, and others
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Adam Bede
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 23 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in "the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis". But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very good book
- By Terri Tinkham on 03-11-19
By: George Eliot
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An Irish Country Doctor
- A Novel
- By: Patrick Taylor
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,334
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,850
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,851
Barry Laverty, M.B., can barely find the village of Ballybucklebo on a map when he first sets out to seek gainful employment there, but already he knows that there is nowhere he would rather live than in the emerald hills and dales of Northern Ireland. The proud owner of a spanking-new medical degree and little else in the way of worldly possessions, Barry jumps at the chance to secure a position as an assistant in a small rural practice. At least until he meets Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Something's Missing ... But It's Not the "F Bomb"!
- By Bookworm on 09-06-13
By: Patrick Taylor
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Cold Comfort Farm
- Penguin Classics
- By: Stella Gibbons
- Narrated by: Pearl Mackie
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 310
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 310
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at 19, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last 20 years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very, very amusing, a go to if one needs cheering
- By Laura G. Marcantoni on 11-05-20
By: Stella Gibbons
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How Green Was My Valley
- By: Richard Llewellyn
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 644
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 562
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 561
How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn’s best-selling - and timeless - classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn’s characters fight, love, laugh, and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people. Richard Llewellyn (1906–1983), a Welsh novelist, was born in Hendon, England, in the county of Middlesex.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The rhythm of life... the pattern of words...
- By Jan on 04-16-13
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Independent People
- By: Halldór Laxness
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 20 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 385
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 347
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 347
This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I am so confused about this introduction
- By George M on 09-10-18
By: Halldór Laxness
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The Playboy of the Western World
- By: J.M. Synge
- Narrated by: Orson Bean, Alley Mills, Full Cast
- Length: 1 hr and 37 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Orson Bean and Alley Mills star in the story of a man who becomes the town hero after he boasts of murdering his father. Riots greeted the first performance of this 1907 comic masterpiece of the Irish Literary Renaissance. L.A. Theatre Works reprises the Pacific Resident Theatre's acclaimed production.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant
- By Michael Burke on 04-11-19
By: J.M. Synge
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Andersen's Fairy Tales, Volume 1
- By: Hans Christian Andersen
- Narrated by: Emma Fenney, Phil Gigante, Erin Yuen
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness. Readily accessible by children, they present lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity that appeal to mature listeners as well. This collection of 18 tales includes "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Princess and the Pea", and "The Snow Queen".
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Cousin Phillis
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Joe Marsh
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
Cousin Phillis – a miniature masterpiece – is set in the 1840s, when the coming of the railway was changing the face of England, and quiet rural communities, coming into contact with the outside world, were changed forever. The story focuses on the effect these changes have on a naïve country girl, Phillis, as she encounters love, with all its pains and pleasures, for the first time.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Delicate Story
- By Mama C on 01-08-11
What listeners say about Precious Bane
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ignazia
- 02-23-17
Good performances
It is a shame this is an abridged version of this novel but all the readers did a great job with their performances.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- MR
- 10-02-12
NOT the novel
What would have made Precious Bane better?
This is a weird combination of spoken play and synopsis - not a recording of the entire novel. HUGE gaps in the narrative and badly portrayed characters marred what could have been a lovely listening experience.
Would you ever listen to anything by Mary Webb again?
Yes - provided it is a recording of a novel and not a mishmash of snippets jammed together with random background noise
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Maureen O'Sullivan and Dan O'Herlihy ?
there was no narrator. it was a bunch of actors speaking parts
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
the book itself is FANTASTIC - the recording was not
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Jean Wendland
- 01-21-17
what was that about?
I read this a few years ago. This was unrecognizable. The accents were indecipherable. There was too much waste of time in music. And the story didn't make sense . If you haven't read the book you wouldn't get it.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
- Elizabeth Scoggin
- 03-13-15
Disappointing abridgment
Precious Bain is a beautiful story. This abridgment takes out all of the descriptive language of the author plus the details that give it life. Descriptions of countryside, the building of relationships,depth of the characters both good and bad,
It is more a dramatization, or the soundtrack of a short bad movie then a book. I wish I had been warned before I made this purchase.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
- Donna
- 05-09-11
Awful. Just... awful.
Is it possible to give zero stars? I would if I could. This recording appears to be a digital copy of a vinyl* original of an aged radio play. (* There's a scratch in soundtrack during the first 10 minutes or so.) The abridgement is terrible and manages to lose -all- the charm and poetry of the book. The dialogue is garbled, the acting is flat. If you liked the book or the 1989 BBC production enough to search out an audio version of Precious Bane, you won't like this.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Elizabeth P. McKean
- 04-21-19
Vintage radio performance
Once I realized the format was a performance, I relaxed into the accents and familiar words and enjoyed it. Maureen O'Sullivan!
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