-
Smacked
- Narrated by: Ella Watson-Russell
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $7.01
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Smacked is an evocative collection of moments showcasing human nature at its weakest and most vulnerable. Hecq’s poetic prose situates the listener firmly into the lives of her characters, taking them along for the ride as she presents each story with an inimitable flair that retains the realities of addiction and dependency. She handles each moment of fixation with a respect and delicacy that are fitting for such weighty themes, while still doing justice to the physical and mental ramifications and side effects of what some might call mere obsession.
Immerse yourself as each story invites you to slide down the slippery slope of these characters’ most raw and hidden selves.
Dominique Hecq grew up in Belgium. She now lives in Melbourne. Hecq writes across genres and sometimes across tongues. Her works include a novel, four collections of stories, and 11 books of poetry. Tracks (2020) and Songlines (2021) are her latest offerings. With Eugen Bacon, she coauthored Speculate (2021), a microlit dialogue.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Lying Game
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Ware
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a cool June morning, Isa Wilde, a resident of the seemingly idyllic coastal village of Salten, is walking her dog along a tidal estuary. Before she can stop him, Isa's dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick - and to her horror, Isa discovers it's not a stick at all...but a human bone. As her three best friends from childhood converge in Salten to comfort a seriously shaken-up Isa, terrifying discoveries are made, and their collective history slowly unravels.
-
-
REALLY LET DOWN, I'm not gonna lie! (No spoilers)
- By Very disappointed on 07-27-17
By: Ruth Ware
-
And the Mountains Echoed
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini, Navid Negahban, Shohreh Aghdashloo
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Khaled Hosseini, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.
-
-
Does the End Justify the Means
- By FanB14 on 05-24-13
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
The Hazel Wood
- By: Melissa Albert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Soler, James Fouhey
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away - by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: "Stay away from the Hazel Wood."
-
-
dark and modern fairytale
- By Stephanie on 02-02-18
By: Melissa Albert
-
White Oleander
- By: Janet Fitch
- Narrated by: Oprah Winfrey
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping first novel, a young girl, orphaned when her mother murders an ex-lover, endures the shuffle of a foster child's life. Oprah enjoyed her book club pick so much that she narrates the audiobook edition!
Browse more Oprah Picks.
-
-
White Oleander
- By Tracy on 04-09-04
By: Janet Fitch
-
Just for Today
- By: Nell Hudson
- Narrated by: Nell Hudson
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It all starts on New Year's Eve. A night that has to be a success, whatever the cost. For Joni and her friends, it'll be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour of any other, but by sunrise, they'll be dealing with something darker than the usual post-party comedown. Not that they let this stand in their way. For this is their year to revel in all that the playground of London has to offer: sneaking into places they shouldn't, breaking every rule, falling in love with the wrong people. All the while avoiding one undeniable truth: it's not if the party ends, it's how.
-
-
Nell Hudson has a beautiful way with words in this well-written debut novel. A story of gorgeous, shiny people in dark places.
- By Linda Mordan on 07-20-24
By: Nell Hudson
-
The Woman at 46 Heath Street
- By: Lesley Sanderson
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The letter is addressed to me. No stamp, swirly handwriting in black ink. I pull out a piece of paper, stiffening when I read the message. Hands trembling, the note slides to the floor: Your husband is having an affair. Six words written in neat block letters. Six words slipped through her letterbox, destroying her marriage, exposing Ella’s perfect life as perfect lies. But Ella has a plan: Alice is the answer to her problems. A lodger to help keep her afloat, a friend to keep the loneliness at bay. Only Alice has her own reasons for wanting to live at 46 Heath Street....
-
-
Pathetic Needy Main Character
- By JenniferLOVESThrillers on 04-02-19
By: Lesley Sanderson
-
The Lying Game
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Ware
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a cool June morning, Isa Wilde, a resident of the seemingly idyllic coastal village of Salten, is walking her dog along a tidal estuary. Before she can stop him, Isa's dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick - and to her horror, Isa discovers it's not a stick at all...but a human bone. As her three best friends from childhood converge in Salten to comfort a seriously shaken-up Isa, terrifying discoveries are made, and their collective history slowly unravels.
-
-
REALLY LET DOWN, I'm not gonna lie! (No spoilers)
- By Very disappointed on 07-27-17
By: Ruth Ware
-
And the Mountains Echoed
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini, Navid Negahban, Shohreh Aghdashloo
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Khaled Hosseini, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.
-
-
Does the End Justify the Means
- By FanB14 on 05-24-13
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
The Hazel Wood
- By: Melissa Albert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Soler, James Fouhey
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away - by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: "Stay away from the Hazel Wood."
-
-
dark and modern fairytale
- By Stephanie on 02-02-18
By: Melissa Albert
-
White Oleander
- By: Janet Fitch
- Narrated by: Oprah Winfrey
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping first novel, a young girl, orphaned when her mother murders an ex-lover, endures the shuffle of a foster child's life. Oprah enjoyed her book club pick so much that she narrates the audiobook edition!
Browse more Oprah Picks.
-
-
White Oleander
- By Tracy on 04-09-04
By: Janet Fitch
-
Just for Today
- By: Nell Hudson
- Narrated by: Nell Hudson
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It all starts on New Year's Eve. A night that has to be a success, whatever the cost. For Joni and her friends, it'll be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour of any other, but by sunrise, they'll be dealing with something darker than the usual post-party comedown. Not that they let this stand in their way. For this is their year to revel in all that the playground of London has to offer: sneaking into places they shouldn't, breaking every rule, falling in love with the wrong people. All the while avoiding one undeniable truth: it's not if the party ends, it's how.
-
-
Nell Hudson has a beautiful way with words in this well-written debut novel. A story of gorgeous, shiny people in dark places.
- By Linda Mordan on 07-20-24
By: Nell Hudson
-
The Woman at 46 Heath Street
- By: Lesley Sanderson
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The letter is addressed to me. No stamp, swirly handwriting in black ink. I pull out a piece of paper, stiffening when I read the message. Hands trembling, the note slides to the floor: Your husband is having an affair. Six words written in neat block letters. Six words slipped through her letterbox, destroying her marriage, exposing Ella’s perfect life as perfect lies. But Ella has a plan: Alice is the answer to her problems. A lodger to help keep her afloat, a friend to keep the loneliness at bay. Only Alice has her own reasons for wanting to live at 46 Heath Street....
-
-
Pathetic Needy Main Character
- By JenniferLOVESThrillers on 04-02-19
By: Lesley Sanderson
-
Pull Me Under
- By: Kelly Luce
- Narrated by: Amy McFadden
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chizuru Akitani is the 12-year-old daughter of the famous violinist and Japanese "Living National Treasure" Hiro Akitani. Overweight and hafu (her mother is white), she is tormented by her classmates and targeted by the most relentless bully of them all, Tomoya Yu. When Chizuru's mother dies suddenly, her father offers her no comfort and she is left feeling alone and unmoored. At school, her bully's cruelty intensifies, and in a moment of blind rage, Chizuru grabs a Morimoto letter opener from her teacher's desk and fatally stabs Tomoya Yu in the neck.
-
-
Missing Something...
- By Amazon Customer on 03-07-17
By: Kelly Luce
-
The Date
- By: Louise Jensen
- Narrated by: Jasmine Blackborow
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Her Saturday night started normally. Recently separated from her husband, Ali has been persuaded by her friends to go on a date with a new man. She is ready, she is nervous, and she is excited. She is about to take a step into her new future. By Sunday morning, Ali’s life is unrecognizable. She wakes, and she knows that something is wrong. She is home, she is alone, she is hurt, and she has no memory of what happened to her.
-
-
Bad Date
- By Andrea Rberson on 07-14-18
By: Louise Jensen
-
The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
-
-
I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
-
The Old Drift
- A Novel
- By: Namwali Serpell
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 24 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
-
-
A saga of Africa and African immigrants
- By Books on our Brains Society/ Barbara on 08-02-19
By: Namwali Serpell
-
Mr. Flood's Last Resort
- A Novel
- By: Jess Kidd
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maud Drennan is a dedicated caretaker, but her sunny, capable disposition and snappy quips mask a deep sadness. A tragic childhood event left her in the company of a cast of patron saints who pop in and out of her life like unwelcome tourists. She tries to find solace in her hard work in London...but then she meets the inimitable Mr. Flood. A menace by all accounts, Cathal Flood is a widower living alone in a Gothic Dorset mansion crawling with collector's items and feral cats.
-
-
BROUGHT ME JOY
- By Carol on 07-07-18
By: Jess Kidd
-
The Birdcage
- By: Eve Chase
- Narrated by: Taj Atwall, Aurora Dawson-Hunte
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When half-sisters Kat, Flora, and Lauren are unexpectedly summoned to Rock Point, their wild and remote Cornish summer home, it's not a welcome invitation. They haven't been back since that fateful summer twenty years ago—a summer they're desperate to forget. But when they arrive, it's clear they're not alone. Someone is lurking in the shadows, watching their every move. Someone who remembers exactly what they did.
-
-
STUNNING
- By mymimisthebest on 07-24-22
By: Eve Chase
-
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
In Her Wake
- By: Amanda Jennings
- Narrated by: Kate Rawson
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A tragic family event reveals devastating news that rips apart Bella's comfortable existence. Embarking on a personal journey to uncover the truth, she faces a series of traumatic discoveries that take her to the ruggedly beautiful Cornish coast, where hidden truths, past betrayals and a 25-year-old mystery threaten not just her identity but her life.
-
-
Slow
- By aaron f. on 05-17-16
By: Amanda Jennings
-
The Stranger in Our Home
- By: Sophie Draper
- Narrated by: Emma Pallant
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When her stepmother dies, Caro returns to her childhood home in the rural English countryside. She hadn’t seen Elizabeth in years, but the remote farmhouse offers refuge from a bad relationship and a chance to start again. But going through Elizabeth’s belongings unearths memories Caro would rather stay buried. In particular, the story her stepmother would tell her about two little girls and the terrible thing they do. As heavy snow traps Caro in the village, where her neighbours stare and whisper, Caro is forced to question why Elizabeth hated her so much and what she was hiding.
-
-
nice little mystery
- By lisa on 03-27-20
By: Sophie Draper
-
Thirteen Ways of Looking
- Fiction
- By: Colum McCann
- Narrated by: Colum McCann
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In such acclaimed novels as Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic, National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann has transfixed listeners with his precision, tenderness, and authority. Now, in his first collection of short fiction in more than a decade, McCann charts the territory of chance and the profound and intimate consequences of even our smallest moments.
-
-
Euphonies, Heartrending and Profound
- By W Perry Hall on 10-30-15
By: Colum McCann
-
Tin Man
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ellis and Michael are 12-year-old boys when they first become friends, and for a long time, it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of overbearing fathers. And then one day, this closest of friendships grows into something more. But then, we fast-forward a decade or so to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question: What happened in the years between?
-
-
new favorite book
- By steph on 10-01-18
By: Sarah Winman
-
The Wildling Sisters
- By: Eve Chase
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett, Emilia Fox
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 15-year-old Margot and her three sisters arrive at Applecote Manor in June 1959, they expect a quiet English country summer. Instead they find their aunt and uncle still reeling from the disappearance of their daughter, Audrey, five years before. As the sisters become divided by new tensions when two handsome neighbors drop by, Margot finds herself drawn into the life Audrey left behind. When the summer takes a deadly turn, the girls must unite behind an unthinkable choice or find themselves torn apart forever.
-
-
Ehh...
- By RueRue on 12-15-18
By: Eve Chase
Critic reviews
Runner-up, 2021 Carmel Digital Literary Award
"Smacked is a moving collection of stories about addiction told with heart-stopping narrative control and emotional resonance." (Roanna Gonsalves, 2021 Carmel Digital Literary Award judge)
"Hecq writes playfully and with irony, thrumming prose and poetry in self-aware stories gravid with familiar yet unfamiliar protagonists and their dented victims or saviours. Smacked and other stories of addiction is a tight rope of connections and metaphors, the reader walking on tiptoe with a balancing pole, yet at the same time craving a haircut or a quince." (Eugen Bacon, author of Claiming T-Mo and The Road to Woop Woop & Other Stories)
Related to this topic
-
The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
-
-
I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
-
Her Body and Other Parties
- Stories
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
-
The Things We Never Said
- By: Susan Elliot Wright
- Narrated by: Kate Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1964, Maggie wakes to find herself in a mental asylum, with no idea who she is or how she got there. Remnants of memories swirl in her mind - a familiar song, a storm, a moment of violence. Slowly, she begins to piece together the past and the events which brought her to this point.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Anonymous User on 01-18-22
-
High Dive
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Doyle Gerard
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
-
-
Humor? Not Funny.
- By W Perry Hall on 04-10-16
By: Jonathan Lee
-
The Invisible Circus
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan's highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O'Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.
-
-
Too bad zero was not a choice...
- By IVAL on 04-28-13
By: Jennifer Egan
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
-
-
I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
-
Her Body and Other Parties
- Stories
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
-
The Things We Never Said
- By: Susan Elliot Wright
- Narrated by: Kate Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1964, Maggie wakes to find herself in a mental asylum, with no idea who she is or how she got there. Remnants of memories swirl in her mind - a familiar song, a storm, a moment of violence. Slowly, she begins to piece together the past and the events which brought her to this point.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Anonymous User on 01-18-22
-
High Dive
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Doyle Gerard
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
-
-
Humor? Not Funny.
- By W Perry Hall on 04-10-16
By: Jonathan Lee
-
The Invisible Circus
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan's highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O'Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.
-
-
Too bad zero was not a choice...
- By IVAL on 04-28-13
By: Jennifer Egan
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
-
-
Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
-
Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man 20 years her senior. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints - victim, perpetrator, and witness - Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
-
-
One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
-
Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
-
-
Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
-
The Daughter
- By: Jane Shemilt
- Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon. But when her youngest child, 15-year-old Naomi, doesn't come home after her school play, Jenny's seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken.
-
-
BORING...
- By Nyesha on 06-08-15
By: Jane Shemilt
-
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
Lionel Asbo
- State of England
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .
-
-
Jēz...us! Just don't buy it for your Grans.
- By Darwin8u on 01-03-13
By: Martin Amis
-
Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
-
-
Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
-
The Killer Next Door
- By: Alex Marwood
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn't, they wouldn't be renting rooms in a dodgy old building for cash - no credit check, no lease. It's the kind of place you end up when you you've run out of other options.The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don't know is that one of them is a killer. He's already chosen his next victim, and he'll do anything to protect his secret.
-
-
Incredible--but not for the faint of heart
- By Lesley on 01-11-15
By: Alex Marwood
-
The American Girl
- A Novel
- By: Kate Horsley
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Nan McNamara
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a quiet summer morning, 17-year-old American exchange student Quinn Perkins stumbles out of the woods near the small French town of St. Roch. She is barefoot, bloodied, and unable to say what has happened to her; Quinn's appearance creates quite a stir, especially since the Blavettes - the French family with whom she's been staying - have mysteriously disappeared. Now the media, and everyone in the idyllic village, are wondering if the American girl had anything to do with her host family's disappearance.
-
-
Oh well...
- By Leigh on 08-10-16
By: Kate Horsley
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
The Road Home
- By: Rose Tremain
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008, The Road Home is the best-selling story of Lev, a middle-aged migrant from Eastern Europe, who moves to London in search of work after losing his wife and job. Lev's London is awash with money, celebrity and complacency. The world Tremain creates is both convincing and poignant.
-
-
OK - nice narration - good characters
- By bea on 02-21-11
By: Rose Tremain
-
Glorious
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Blending the truth of American history with the fruits of Bernice L. McFadden's rich imagination, this is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.
-
-
Gruesome violence
- By Marilyn on 11-22-11