-
Tropic of Squalor
- Poems
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 1 hr and 8 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Prime members: New to Audible?Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Tropic of Squalor
Buy for $10.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,820
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,449
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,423
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
What a rare pleasure
- By Lisa Braden on 09-27-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Art of Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 703
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 600
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 584
Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told - and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.)
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant!
- By A. Potter on 01-18-16
By: Mary Karr
-
Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 982
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 727
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 723
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
-
Cherry
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 241
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 174
From Mary Karr comes the gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Mary Karr's voice makes the story come alive
- By Michael on 11-19-03
By: Mary Karr
-
Creeping Waves
- By: Matthew M. Bartlett
- Narrated by: Dexter Herron
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Where is the real Leeds? How does one get there? Is it floating on the air—words and music you can almost reach out and grab like wriggling worms of sound and ether? Is it in the carnival that seethes under the corrupted church, drawing the lost along shadowy corridors and through the strangely angled funhouse doors to the place where the city fathers perform secret rites with the goat-headed masters of the dark?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The perfect accompaniment for a nighttime drive on unfamiliar rural roads
- By Yves Tourigny on 03-07-18
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,074
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 927
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 916
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,820
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,449
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,423
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
What a rare pleasure
- By Lisa Braden on 09-27-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Art of Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 703
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 600
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 584
Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told - and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.)
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant!
- By A. Potter on 01-18-16
By: Mary Karr
-
Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 982
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 727
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 723
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
-
Cherry
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 241
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 174
From Mary Karr comes the gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Mary Karr's voice makes the story come alive
- By Michael on 11-19-03
By: Mary Karr
-
Creeping Waves
- By: Matthew M. Bartlett
- Narrated by: Dexter Herron
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Where is the real Leeds? How does one get there? Is it floating on the air—words and music you can almost reach out and grab like wriggling worms of sound and ether? Is it in the carnival that seethes under the corrupted church, drawing the lost along shadowy corridors and through the strangely angled funhouse doors to the place where the city fathers perform secret rites with the goat-headed masters of the dark?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The perfect accompaniment for a nighttime drive on unfamiliar rural roads
- By Yves Tourigny on 03-07-18
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,074
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 927
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 916
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
The Vine That Ate the South
- By: J. D. Wilkes
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 28
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as "The Deadening", where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial. Our protagonist and his accomplice - the one and only Carver Canute - set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A beutiful and accurate tale of the South!
- By Cedarlamb on 03-20-20
By: J. D. Wilkes
-
Death by Living
- Life Is Meant to Be Spent
- By: N. D. Wilson
- Narrated by: N. D. Wilson
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 171
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 152
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 152
A poetic portrait of faith, futility, and the joy of this mortal life. In this astoundingly unique audiobook, best-selling author N. D. Wilson reminds each of us that to truly live, we must recognize that we are dying. Every second we create more of our past. Then, we must see the future. We stand in the now. God says create. Live. Choose. Shape the past. Etch your life in stone, and what you make will be forever.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Phenomenal non-fiction narrative!
- By Nathan Cedarland on 07-05-20
By: N. D. Wilson
-
IRL
- By: Tommy Pico
- Narrated by: Tommy Pico
- Length: 1 hr and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 53
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 49
IRL is a sweaty summertime poem composed like a long text message, rooted in the epic tradition of A.R. Ammons, ancient Kumeyaay Bird Songs, and Beyoncé’s visual albums. It follows Teebs, a reservation-born, queer NDN weirdo, trying to figure out his impulses/desires/history in the midst of Brooklyn rooftops, privacy in the age of the Internet, street harassment, suicide, boys boys boys, literature, colonialism, religion, leaving one's 20s, and a love/hate relationship with English.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Great reading by author
- By SadieBelle93 on 04-25-21
By: Tommy Pico
-
Damned
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 81
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 67
The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose - and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Delightful
- By Kimberly S. on 03-04-22
By: Chuck Palahniuk
-
The Nameless Dark
- By: T.E. Grau, Nathan Ballingrud
- Narrated by: Armen Taylor
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 196
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 175
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 175
The Nameless Dark debuts a major new voice in contemporary weird fiction. Within these minutes, you'll find whispers of the familiar ghosts of the classic pulps - Lovecraft, Bradbury, Smith - blended with Grau's uniquely macabre, witty storytelling, securing his place at the table amid this current Renaissance of literary horror.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
absolute gem
- By T on 07-01-16
By: T.E. Grau, and others
-
Time Is a Mother
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 112
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sitting in grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, these poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Another Amazing Ocean Vuong
- By Anonymous User on 07-06-23
By: Ocean Vuong
-
Man with No Name
- The Nanashi Series, Book 1
- By: Laird Barron
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 273
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 244
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 243
Nanashi was born into a life of violence. Delivered from the mean streets by the Heron Clan, he mastered the way of the gun and knife and swiftly ascended through yakuza ranks to become a dreaded enforcer. His latest task? He and an entourage of expert killers are commanded to kidnap Muzaki, a retired world-renowned wrestler under protection of the rival Dragon Syndicate. It should be business as bloody usual for Nanashi and his ruthless brothers-in-arms.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
I like this
- By Vermillion on 09-10-20
By: Laird Barron
-
The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1
- At the Edge of Empire
- By: Daniel Kraus
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 22 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 61
Twenty minutes after his murder on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1896, 17-year-old Zebulon Finch awakens, resurrected to suffer an eternity upon the planet. But of all people...why him? Is it because he was a violent Chicago gangster and this is his chance at redemption?
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Horrible
- By E. Quinlog on 02-21-16
By: Daniel Kraus
-
The Imago Sequence
- And Other Stories
- By: Laird Barron
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 612
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 547
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 545
The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Agonizingly Dull and Meaningless
- By Zachary on 03-14-20
By: Laird Barron
-
A Friend of the Earth
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 108
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 66
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 66
A Friend of the Earth opens in the year 2025, as Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tidewater ekes out a bleak living in southern California, managing a rock star's private menagerie. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed and most of the major mammalian species are extinct.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
ok
- By Luke on 04-26-07
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Blackbirds
- Miriam Black, Book 1
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Emily Beresford
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 438
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 397
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 394
Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Not for the faint of heart or kids but exciting
- By Steph on 04-07-14
By: Chuck Wendig
-
Life on Mars
- Poems
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like "love" and "illness" now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Instantly and Profoundly Moved
- By Dr. Bob on 11-06-18
By: Tracy K. Smith
Publisher's summary
A new volume of poetry from the New York Times best-selling and esteemed author of The Liar’s Club and Lit.
Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous - that mystery some of us hope toward in secret, or maybe dare to pray to.
The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power - illness, death, love’s agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches.
But whether you’re an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.
More from the same
Narrator
Related to this topic
-
Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 473
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 426
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 423
For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
-
The Sky Is Yours
- A Novel
- By: Chandler Klang Smith
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 89
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 82
In the burned-out, futuristic city of Empire Island, three young people navigate a crumbling metropolis constantly under threat from a pair of dragons that circle the skies. When violence strikes, reality star Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the spoiled scion of the metropolis' last dynasty; Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, his tempestuous, death-obsessed betrothed; and Abby, a feral beauty he discovered tossed out with the trash; are forced to flee everything they've ever known.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
a hot mess
- By Alison on 04-09-19
-
Liminal States
- By: Zack Parsons
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 24 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 51
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 52
The debut novel from Zack Parsons, My Tank is Fight! is a mind-bending journey through time and genres. Beginning in 1874, with a blood-soaked western story of revenge, Liminal States follows a trio of characters through a 1950s noir detective story and 21st-century sci-fi horror. Their paths are tragically intertwined and their choices have far-reaching consequences for the course of American history.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Captivating and original concept
- By desiree on 02-22-15
By: Zack Parsons
-
The Winterfox Journals Book One: Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter
- By: Brian P. Easton
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 93
Among the Northern Cheyenne of the Great Plains lives a boy named Winterfox, whose family has fought monsters since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. In the aftermath of Westward Expansion, he has become the sole heir to their blood feud against the Beast. Winterfox comes of age in the long shadows of the American frontier, a time when magic has not yet passed into myth. It is a place where the mundane and fantastic still walk side by side, and the warrior society of the Rédo’osnin Dog Men will be remembered a little while longer.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Counting Coup and Taking Scalps
- By Derek M. Grebner on 11-11-19
By: Brian P. Easton
-
The Incarnations
- A Novel
- By: Susan Barker
- Narrated by: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 176
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 161
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 161
Who are you? You must be wondering. I am your soul mate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of 16 million in search of you. So begins the first letter that falls into Wang's lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang's previous lives - from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
What was that you said?
- By cecil reniche-smith on 08-29-15
By: Susan Barker
-
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
- Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Joy Osmanski, Kaleo Griffith, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 279
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 249
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 250
In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Stylish modern magic realism
- By Ryan on 04-10-13
By: Karen Russell
-
Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 473
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 426
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 423
For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
-
The Sky Is Yours
- A Novel
- By: Chandler Klang Smith
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 89
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 82
In the burned-out, futuristic city of Empire Island, three young people navigate a crumbling metropolis constantly under threat from a pair of dragons that circle the skies. When violence strikes, reality star Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the spoiled scion of the metropolis' last dynasty; Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, his tempestuous, death-obsessed betrothed; and Abby, a feral beauty he discovered tossed out with the trash; are forced to flee everything they've ever known.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
a hot mess
- By Alison on 04-09-19
-
Liminal States
- By: Zack Parsons
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 24 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 51
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 52
The debut novel from Zack Parsons, My Tank is Fight! is a mind-bending journey through time and genres. Beginning in 1874, with a blood-soaked western story of revenge, Liminal States follows a trio of characters through a 1950s noir detective story and 21st-century sci-fi horror. Their paths are tragically intertwined and their choices have far-reaching consequences for the course of American history.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Captivating and original concept
- By desiree on 02-22-15
By: Zack Parsons
-
The Winterfox Journals Book One: Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter
- By: Brian P. Easton
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 93
Among the Northern Cheyenne of the Great Plains lives a boy named Winterfox, whose family has fought monsters since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. In the aftermath of Westward Expansion, he has become the sole heir to their blood feud against the Beast. Winterfox comes of age in the long shadows of the American frontier, a time when magic has not yet passed into myth. It is a place where the mundane and fantastic still walk side by side, and the warrior society of the Rédo’osnin Dog Men will be remembered a little while longer.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Counting Coup and Taking Scalps
- By Derek M. Grebner on 11-11-19
By: Brian P. Easton
-
The Incarnations
- A Novel
- By: Susan Barker
- Narrated by: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 176
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 161
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 161
Who are you? You must be wondering. I am your soul mate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of 16 million in search of you. So begins the first letter that falls into Wang's lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang's previous lives - from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
What was that you said?
- By cecil reniche-smith on 08-29-15
By: Susan Barker
-
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
- Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Joy Osmanski, Kaleo Griffith, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 279
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 249
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 250
In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Stylish modern magic realism
- By Ryan on 04-10-13
By: Karen Russell
-
The Shell Collector
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 300
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 258
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 259
The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take listeners from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties - metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts - and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator not appropriate to the book.
- By Janet on 02-18-17
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 982
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 727
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 723
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
-
Battleborn
- By: Claire Vaye Watkins
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Morgan Hallett, Laura Knight Keating, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful magnificent stories beautifully told
- By Pedro Ramirez on 12-03-15
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 98
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 88
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Her Body and Other Parties
- Stories
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 603
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 519
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 526
In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,074
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 927
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 916
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
Gods of Howl Mountain
- By: Taylor Brown
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 220
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 197
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 197
In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina. Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted 1940 Ford coupe.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Appalatia Noir
- By meanwhile on 09-18-18
By: Taylor Brown
-
The Necromancer's House
- By: Christopher Buehlman
- Narrated by: Todd Haberkorn
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 436
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 384
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 383
Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Finally - Magic / Fantasy Novel for adults.
- By David on 04-23-14
-
The Blue Blazes
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 93
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 79
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 79
Meet Mookie Pearl. Criminal underworld? He runs in it. Supernatural underworld? He hunts in it. Nothing stops Mookie when he’s on the job. But when his daughter takes up arms and opposes him, something’s gotta give....
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Was hesitant at first
- By Andrew on 07-23-13
By: Chuck Wendig
-
Something More Than Night
- By: Ian Tregillis
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 419
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 383
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 382
Ian Tregillis's Something More Than Night is a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas’s vision of Heaven. It’s a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
part noir mystery, part philosophy class
- By Alison on 04-14-14
By: Ian Tregillis
-
The Ploughmen
- A Novel
- By: Kim Zupan
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,304
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,188
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,175
At the center of this searing fever-dream of a novel are two men - a killer awaiting trial and a troubled young deputy - sitting across fromeach other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: JohnGload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration; and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perceptive Narration
- By Abby Elvidge on 09-22-16
By: Kim Zupan
-
Blackbirds
- Miriam Black, Book 1
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Emily Beresford
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 438
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 397
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 394
Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Not for the faint of heart or kids but exciting
- By Steph on 04-07-14
By: Chuck Wendig
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Cherry
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 241
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 174
From Mary Karr comes the gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Mary Karr's voice makes the story come alive
- By Michael on 11-19-03
By: Mary Karr
-
Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 982
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 727
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 723
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
-
Now Go Out There
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Every year there are one or two commencement speeches that strike a chord with audiences far greater than the student bodies for which they are intended. In 2015 Mary Karr's speech to the graduating class of Syracuse University caught fire, hailed across the Internet as one of the most memorable in recent years and lighting up the Twittersphere. In Now Go Out There, Karr explains why having your heart broken is just as important as - if not more important than - falling in love.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
I can’t win
- By Belle on 07-26-18
By: Mary Karr
-
The Liars' Club
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Awful narration
- By JG, Shreveport, LA on 12-10-23
By: Mary Karr
-
The Art of Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 703
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 600
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 584
Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told - and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.)
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant!
- By A. Potter on 01-18-16
By: Mary Karr
-
Before and After
- The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society
- By: Judy Christie, Lisa Wingate
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,668
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,445
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,431
From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of 15 adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Badly written
- By Stacie on 02-25-20
By: Judy Christie, and others
-
Cherry
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 241
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 174
From Mary Karr comes the gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Mary Karr's voice makes the story come alive
- By Michael on 11-19-03
By: Mary Karr
-
Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 982
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 727
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 723
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
-
Now Go Out There
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Every year there are one or two commencement speeches that strike a chord with audiences far greater than the student bodies for which they are intended. In 2015 Mary Karr's speech to the graduating class of Syracuse University caught fire, hailed across the Internet as one of the most memorable in recent years and lighting up the Twittersphere. In Now Go Out There, Karr explains why having your heart broken is just as important as - if not more important than - falling in love.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
I can’t win
- By Belle on 07-26-18
By: Mary Karr
-
The Liars' Club
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Awful narration
- By JG, Shreveport, LA on 12-10-23
By: Mary Karr
-
The Art of Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 703
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 600
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 584
Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told - and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.)
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant!
- By A. Potter on 01-18-16
By: Mary Karr
-
Before and After
- The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society
- By: Judy Christie, Lisa Wingate
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,668
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,445
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,431
From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of 15 adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Badly written
- By Stacie on 02-25-20
By: Judy Christie, and others
What listeners say about Tropic of Squalor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jennifer S. Leblanc
- 08-30-18
Beautiful, haunting and unmistakably Mary!
This is a haunting emotional ride. Beautiful, raw and so very real. I loved every single poem. If you think you don’t like, or don’t ‘get’ poetry... read this and you will be converted. It’s a perfect collection of verse about our times. Must read! And hearing the author read it, with her own unique and moving voice makes it all the better so it’s worth buying the audio version, too. Thank you, Mary Karr. This is perfection.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!