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The Electric Hotel
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author Dominic Smith, a radiant audiobook tracing the intertwined fates of a silent-film director and his muse.
Dominic Smith’s The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey - America’s first movie town - and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man’s doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.
For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films, who started out as a concession agent for the Lumière brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard.
But when a film-history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel - the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose - the past comes surging back. In his rundown hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration and Claude’s memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.
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What listeners say about The Electric Hotel
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- eric warshaw
- 11-22-20
Historical fiction at its best
This book came as recommended to me based upon my previous reading. I downloaded it a while ago and forgot about it. When I discovered I had an unread book in my library I decided to give it a listen. What a transfixing great story about the beginnings of moving pictures World War I tuberculosis stunt work and Hollywood glamour. It’s also one of those great books that spans decades and allows the reader to find out what happens to all the characters he’s become so invested in. I really enjoyed this book and hope others do too
2 people found this helpful
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- Duncan Hastings
- 11-11-19
The eElectric Hotel
A wonderful story very well read. Loved it. Got me wondering how much of the story is based on life circumstances
1 person found this helpful
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- Vance
- 09-12-19
narrator worth it
the narrator made this book. last third was unneeded, but the rest of the book was very interesting.
1 person found this helpful
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- Julianne
- 03-20-23
Narrator is stellar!
The story is nice, I did enjoy the whole thing, the structure, the organization, the story and characters. But the narrator my god! I want him to narrate everything, he’s perfect and his accents and voices are so perfect and made the whole thing much more enjoyable and so real. It felt like watching an old movie. Stellar performance. Loved listening to this.
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Story
In this luminous novel, Dominic Smith reinvents the life of one of photography's founding fathers. In 1839, Louis Daguerre's invention took the world by storm. A decade later, he is sinking deep into delusions brought on by exposure to mercury, the very agent that allowed his daguerreotype process. Believing the world will end within one year, he creates his "Doomsday List", 10 items he must photograph before the final day. It includes a woman he has always loved but has not seen in half a century.
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Dud
- By Deborah on 01-31-08
By: Dominic Smith
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The Parisian
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
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Overly ambitious
- By Turtle on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
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The Bohemians
- A Novel
- By: Jasmin Darznik
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In this novel of the glittering and gritty Jazz Age, a young aspiring photographer named Dorothea Lange arrives in San Francisco in 1918. As a newcomer - and naïve one at that - Dorothea is grateful for the fast friendship of Caroline Lee, a vivacious, straight-talking Chinese American with a complicated past, who introduces Dorothea to Monkey Block, an artists’ colony and the bohemian heart of the city. Dazzled by Caroline and her friends, Dorothea is catapulted into a heady new world of freedom, art, and politics.
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Fascinating time, people and place
- By Claudio Salusso on 10-01-21
By: Jasmin Darznik
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Walking with Ghosts
- A Memoir
- By: Gabriel Byrne
- Narrated by: Gabriel Byrne
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When award-winning actor, producer, and international icon Gabriel Byrne was a young boy, his grandmother brought him to the cinema for the first time. There, Byrne fell in love with the transporting power of the big screen. Growing up in 1950s and 60s Dublin within a family of eight, Byrne's formative childhood years were both carefree and challenging, spent between home, the church, school, and the streets of his ever-changing city.
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Very good
- By Judy McDermott on 02-14-21
By: Gabriel Byrne
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The Words I Never Wrote
- By: Jane Thynne
- Narrated by: Tara Ward, Nathalie Buscombe
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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New York, present day: On a whim, Juno Lambert buys a 1931 Underwood typewriter that once belonged to celebrated journalist Cordelia Capel. Within its case she discovers an unfinished novel, igniting a transatlantic journey to fill the gaps in the story of Cordelia and her sister and the secret that lies between them. Europe, 1936: Cordelia's socialite sister Irene marries a German industrialist who whisks her away to Berlin. Cordelia, feistier and more intellectual than Irene, gets a job at a newspaper in Paris, pursuing the journalism career she cherishes.
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Naive political comparisons
- By Amazon Customer on 03-23-20
By: Jane Thynne
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The Age of Light
- A Novel
- By: Whitney Scharer
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The Age of Light tells the story of Vogue-model-turned-renowned-photographer Lee Miller, and her search to forge a new identity as an artist after a life spent as a muse. She arrives in Paris in 1929, where she soon catches the eye of the famous Surrealist Man Ray. Though he wants to use her only as a model, Lee convinces him to take her on as his assistant. But Man Ray turns out to be an egotistical, charismatic force, and as they work together in the darkroom, their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined, changing the course of Lee's life forever.
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Beautifully written; fascinating characters
- By L. Ledger on 02-11-19
By: Whitney Scharer
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The Golden Hour
- A Novel
- By: Beatriz Williams
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The Bahamas, 1941. Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the duke and duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines.
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Stick with it!
- By Colleen on 07-17-19
By: Beatriz Williams
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The Paris Hours
- A Novel
- By: Alex George
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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One day in the City of Lights. One night in search of lost time. Paris between the wars teems with artists, writers, and musicians, a glittering crucible of genius. But amidst the dazzling creativity of the city’s most famous citizens, four regular people are each searching for something they’ve lost. Told over the course of a single day in 1927, The Paris Hours takes four ordinary people whose stories, told together, are as extraordinary as the glorious city they inhabit.
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A Fun Read
- By Meg on 05-16-20
By: Alex George
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Time After Time
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Grunwald
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite and an aspiring artist whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York. Captivated by Nora from her first electric touch, Joe despairs when he tries to walk her home and she disappears. Finding her again will become the focus of his love and his life.
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The promise of the premise wasn't met
- By Janette on 02-18-20
By: Lisa Grunwald
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The Secrets We Kept
- A Novel
- By: Lara Prescott
- Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan, Cynthia Farrell, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dare publish it, and help Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. Glamorous and sophisticated Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit all over the world - using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a complete novice, and is under Sally's tutelage....
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Eh...it was ok.
- By Nunya on 09-06-19
By: Lara Prescott
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The Foreign Student
- A Novel
- By: Susan Choi
- Narrated by: Daniel K. Isaac
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Highly acclaimed by critics, The Foreign Student is the story of a young Korean man, scarred by war, and the deeply troubled daughter of a wealthy Southern American family. In 1955, a new student arrives at a small college in the Tennessee mountains. Chuck is shy, speaks English haltingly, and on the subject of his earlier life in Korea he will not speak at all. Then he meets Katherine, a beautiful and solitary young woman who, like Chuck, is haunted by some dark episode in her past. Without quite knowing why, these two outsiders are drawn together....
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A beautiful story
- By Doglver on 10-30-20
By: Susan Choi
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A Witch in Time
- By: Constance Sayers
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson, Claire Christie, Brittany Wilkerson, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Helen Lambert has lived several lives-a young piano virtuoso in 1890s Paris, an actress in 1930s Hollywood, a rock star in 1970s Los Angeles - only she doesn't know it. Until she meets a strange man who claims he's watched over her for centuries, bound to her from the beginning. At first, Helen doesn't believe him. Her life is as normal as any other modern career woman's. Then she begins having vivid dreams about ill-fated love and lives cut short. Caught in a curse, Helen will be forced to relive the same tragic events that ruined her previous lives.
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Tired of Heroines’ Repeatedly Making Stupid Decisions
- By Neecie on 03-26-20
By: Constance Sayers