The Vaster Wilds
A Novel
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 $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
January LaVoy
-
By:
-
Lauren Groff
About this listen
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, TIME, ESQUIRE, VOGUE, LA TIMES, SLATE, HARPER'S BAZAAR and others
"Part historical, part horror, part breathless thriller, part wilderness survival tale, The Vaster Wilds is a story about the lengths to which we will go to stay alive."—NPR staff pick
“Lauren Groff just reinvented the adventure novel."—Los Angeles Times
“Glorious…surroundings come alive in prose that lives and breathes upon the page." —Boston Globe
A taut and electrifying novel from celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, about one spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.
Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.
©2023 Lauren Groff (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
-
-
An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
-
Matrix
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.
-
-
Wonderful story well written and narratives
- By ReallyNelie on 09-25-21
By: Lauren Groff
-
Fates and Furies
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Will Damron, Julia Whelan
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Florida and Matrix, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives.
-
-
Paean to Marriage, Mythology and Theatre
- By W Perry Hall on 09-20-15
By: Lauren Groff
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Wellness
- A Novel
- By: Nathan Hill
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the gritty '90s Chicago art scene, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in the thriving underground scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to suburban married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter the often-baffling pursuits of health and happiness from polyamorous would-be suitors to home-renovation hysteria.
-
-
you have to believe it'll work
- By Alex halladay on 09-22-23
By: Nathan Hill
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
-
-
An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
-
Matrix
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.
-
-
Wonderful story well written and narratives
- By ReallyNelie on 09-25-21
By: Lauren Groff
-
Fates and Furies
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Will Damron, Julia Whelan
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Florida and Matrix, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives.
-
-
Paean to Marriage, Mythology and Theatre
- By W Perry Hall on 09-20-15
By: Lauren Groff
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Wellness
- A Novel
- By: Nathan Hill
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the gritty '90s Chicago art scene, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in the thriving underground scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to suburban married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter the often-baffling pursuits of health and happiness from polyamorous would-be suitors to home-renovation hysteria.
-
-
you have to believe it'll work
- By Alex halladay on 09-22-23
By: Nathan Hill
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Land of Milk and Honey
- A Novel
- By: C Pam Zhang
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.
-
-
Started strong
- By Harry on 09-29-23
By: C Pam Zhang
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
Night Watch
- A Novel
- By: Jayne Anne Phillips
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Theo Stockman, Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.
-
-
A hard listen for me
- By Sarah on 10-08-24
-
Absolution
- A Novel
- By: Alice McDermott
- Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky, Rachel Kenney
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
-
-
Hung in there for 2 1/2 hours but had to return it
- By Jackie in MI on 11-14-23
By: Alice McDermott
-
The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
-
-
We Must Always Remember
- By Cammie on 09-28-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
Piranesi
- By: Susanna Clarke
- Narrated by: Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.
-
-
Fascinating Social Study
- By Henry V on 02-26-21
By: Susanna Clarke
-
A House for Alice
- A Novel
- By: Diana Evans
- Narrated by: Natalie Simpson
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, consuming Grenfell Tower and many of the lives within it. Across town, an earlier spark has caught fire. A cigarette left burning in an ashtray. A table strewn with post-it reminders and old newspapers. And one Cornelius Winston Pitt—estranged husband, complicated dad, and Pitt family patriarch—takes his final breaths alone.
-
-
Just awful, and it’s rare I really dislike a book
- By Dorothy on 12-09-23
By: Diana Evans
-
The Tattooist of Auschwitz
- A Novel
- By: Heather Morris
- Narrated by: Richard Armitage
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (German for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism - but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
-
-
A hopeful perspective on a harrowing time
- By melyssa57 (A Page Before Bedtime dot com) on 10-10-18
By: Heather Morris
-
American Dirt
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
-
-
Completely unrealistic
- By Marlene L Marquez on 02-12-20
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
Parable of the Sower
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Lynne Thigpen
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose unlikely prophet is 18-year-old Lauren Olamina. The young woman's diary entries tell the story of her life amid a violent 21st-century hell of walled neighborhoods and drug-crazed pyromaniacs - and reveal her evolving Earthseed philosophy. Against a backdrop of horror emerges a message of hope: if we are willing to embrace divine change, we will survive to fulfill our destiny among the stars.
-
-
Dystopia before dystopia was cool...
- By Amber on 05-28-14
Critic reviews
“I know of few other writers whose sentences are so beautiful and so propulsive. The girl embodies a furious onward motion, as does the prose.”—New York Times Book Review
“[A] thrilling historical adventure. . .the existential themes at the heart of Lauren Groff’s fifth novel—the rawness of life, the precious inner-workings of nature, the drive to continue on in the face of challenges—are as timely as they come.”—TIME
"Part historical, part horror, part breathless thriller, part wilderness survival tale, The Vaster Wilds is a story about the lengths to which we will go to stay alive."—NPR
Dear Listener,
Related to this topic
-
The Door on Half-Bald Hill
- By: Helena Sorensen
- Narrated by: Robert Hook, Janet Devlin, Nigel Patterson
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the Bloodmoon rose, death came rushing into the world. Now the water is bitter, blight consumes everything, and the Crone haunts the hills. While the Druid of Blackthorn searches desperately for hope, the Ovate returns from the underworld bringing omens of despair. But Idris, the young bard, Keeper of the Sacred Word, will walk through fire and iron to uncover a question no one has ever dared to ask - a question that carries a world of answers on its back, a question that can change everything.
-
-
Interesting concept, but it felt incomplete.
- By W. Scott on 10-07-20
By: Helena Sorensen
-
People of the Wolf
- A Novel of North America's Forgotten Past
- By: W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 19 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the dawn of history, a valiant people forged a pathway from an old world into a new one. Led by a dreamer who followed the spirit of the wolf, a handful of courageous men and women dared to cross the frozen wastes to find an untouched, unspoiled continent.
-
-
Magnificent performance of a book I read yesrs ago
- By A Fortune on 08-05-18
By: W. Michael Gear, and others
-
The Glass Woman
- A Novel
- By: Caroline Lea
- Narrated by: Heiða Reed, Smari Gunn
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Jane Eyre and Rebecca - The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea in which a young woman follows her new husband to his remote home on the Icelandic coast in the 1680s, where she faces dark secrets surrounding the death of his first wife amidst a foreboding landscape and the superstitions of the local villagers.
-
-
Grim but ultimately worth it
- By Ellie on 08-29-20
By: Caroline Lea
-
To Build a Fire and Other Stories
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"To Build a Fire," the best-known of Jack London's many short stories, tells the tale of a solitary traveler on the Yukon Trail accompanied only by his dog as they endure the extreme cold. A classic narrative of a battle for survival against the forces of nature, "To Build a Fire" is London at his best. Also included here are "The Red One," "All Gold Canyon," "A Piece of Steak," "The Love of Life," "Flush of Gold," "The Story of Keesh," and "The Wisdom of the Trail."
-
-
Classic stories, poorly read
- By Lyle C Brown on 12-31-12
By: Jack London
-
Lilith
- By: George MacDonald
- Narrated by: Rebecca K. Reynolds
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the story of Mr. Vane, an orphan and heir to a large house - a house in which he has a vision that leads him through a large old mirror into another world. In chronicling the five trips Mr. Vane makes to this other world, MacDonald hauntingly explores the ultimate mystery of evil.
-
-
INACCESSIBLE BOOK BECOMES ACCESSIBLE AND ENJOYABLE
- By Steve on 07-31-19
By: George MacDonald
-
Tales from the Hinterland
- The Hazel Wood
- By: Melissa Albert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Soler
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal and beautiful world where a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice - and still lives.
-
-
Does not disappoint
- By Harley Easton on 02-22-21
By: Melissa Albert
-
The Door on Half-Bald Hill
- By: Helena Sorensen
- Narrated by: Robert Hook, Janet Devlin, Nigel Patterson
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the Bloodmoon rose, death came rushing into the world. Now the water is bitter, blight consumes everything, and the Crone haunts the hills. While the Druid of Blackthorn searches desperately for hope, the Ovate returns from the underworld bringing omens of despair. But Idris, the young bard, Keeper of the Sacred Word, will walk through fire and iron to uncover a question no one has ever dared to ask - a question that carries a world of answers on its back, a question that can change everything.
-
-
Interesting concept, but it felt incomplete.
- By W. Scott on 10-07-20
By: Helena Sorensen
-
People of the Wolf
- A Novel of North America's Forgotten Past
- By: W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 19 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the dawn of history, a valiant people forged a pathway from an old world into a new one. Led by a dreamer who followed the spirit of the wolf, a handful of courageous men and women dared to cross the frozen wastes to find an untouched, unspoiled continent.
-
-
Magnificent performance of a book I read yesrs ago
- By A Fortune on 08-05-18
By: W. Michael Gear, and others
-
The Glass Woman
- A Novel
- By: Caroline Lea
- Narrated by: Heiða Reed, Smari Gunn
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Jane Eyre and Rebecca - The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea in which a young woman follows her new husband to his remote home on the Icelandic coast in the 1680s, where she faces dark secrets surrounding the death of his first wife amidst a foreboding landscape and the superstitions of the local villagers.
-
-
Grim but ultimately worth it
- By Ellie on 08-29-20
By: Caroline Lea
-
To Build a Fire and Other Stories
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"To Build a Fire," the best-known of Jack London's many short stories, tells the tale of a solitary traveler on the Yukon Trail accompanied only by his dog as they endure the extreme cold. A classic narrative of a battle for survival against the forces of nature, "To Build a Fire" is London at his best. Also included here are "The Red One," "All Gold Canyon," "A Piece of Steak," "The Love of Life," "Flush of Gold," "The Story of Keesh," and "The Wisdom of the Trail."
-
-
Classic stories, poorly read
- By Lyle C Brown on 12-31-12
By: Jack London
-
Lilith
- By: George MacDonald
- Narrated by: Rebecca K. Reynolds
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the story of Mr. Vane, an orphan and heir to a large house - a house in which he has a vision that leads him through a large old mirror into another world. In chronicling the five trips Mr. Vane makes to this other world, MacDonald hauntingly explores the ultimate mystery of evil.
-
-
INACCESSIBLE BOOK BECOMES ACCESSIBLE AND ENJOYABLE
- By Steve on 07-31-19
By: George MacDonald
-
Tales from the Hinterland
- The Hazel Wood
- By: Melissa Albert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Soler
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal and beautiful world where a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice - and still lives.
-
-
Does not disappoint
- By Harley Easton on 02-22-21
By: Melissa Albert
-
Mulan: Before the Sword
- By: Grace Lin
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When her sister is bitten by a poisonous spider, Mulan does everything she can to help, including seeking out a renowned healer. However, it quickly becomes apparent that there is more to both the mysterious spider bite and the healer than meets the eye. On a quest with the Jade Rabbit of legend, Mulan visits extraordinary places, meets Immortals, and faces incredible obstacles while searching for an antidote for her sister.
-
-
A Treasure!! A True Classic!
- By Sky on 02-16-24
By: Grace Lin
-
Leaves of Grass
- By: Walt Whitman
- Narrated by: Ed Begley
- Length: 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walt Whitman's celebrated poetry collection, read by Ed Begley.
-
-
It is NOT unabridged.
- By Mark D Worthen PsyD on 09-19-15
By: Walt Whitman
-
Leaves of Grass
- By: Walt Whitman
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the great innovators in American letters, Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves of Grass is his masterpiece, written in a pure, uninhibited style, combining sensual and mystical sensibilities. Its bold, joyous voice, its expansive optimism, and its transcendental vision made it uniquely American.
-
-
No chapters! Can't skip to a particular poem :(
- By April Antoniou on 02-08-13
By: Walt Whitman
-
Guest
- A Changeling Tale
- By: Mary Downing Hahn
- Narrated by: Shelley Atkinson
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When her adorable baby brother is replaced by an ugly, ill-tempered changeling, Mollie is determined to find the so-called Kinde Folke who took baby Thomas, return the changeling she calls Guest, and make them give Thomas back. Natural and magical obstacles and her own reckless temperament make her journey arduous and full of dangers, and a plot rich in surprises and twists makes this book a must-listen for Mary Downing Hahn’s fans.
-
-
My kids loved it!
- By TaniaP on 10-14-19
-
Orange World and Other Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In “Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors”, two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. Plus much more.
-
-
Wild Ride
- By Georgia on 02-07-20
By: Karen Russell
-
Norse Mythology and Runes
- Tales of Norse Myths, History, Gods and Goddes, Vikings, Magical Creatures
- By: Nichole Steven
- Narrated by: Gareth Richards
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Norse Mythology and Runes, this book depicts the main Norse pantheon as follows: Odin, the highest of the mighty, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin's son, extremely powerful but not the wisest of gods; and Loki, Odin's blood brother and a trickster and unrivalled manipulator.
-
-
Great myths
- By Judas649 on 04-02-22
By: Nichole Steven
-
House Made of Dawn
- A Novel
- By: N. Scott Momaday
- Narrated by: N. Scott Momaday, Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young Native American, Abel has come home from war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father’s, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world - modern, industrial America - pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, trying to claim his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust.
-
-
Novel great, reader not so much.
- By Marcia on 05-17-20
By: N. Scott Momaday
-
The Lost Queen
- A Novel
- By: Signe Pike
- Narrated by: Toni Frutin
- Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a land of mountains and mist, tradition and superstition, Languoreth and her brother Lailoken are raised in the Old Way of their ancestors. But in Scotland, a new religion is rising, one that brings disruption, bloodshed, and riot. And even as her family faces the burgeoning forces of Christianity, the Anglo-Saxons, bent on colonization, are encroaching from the east. When conflict brings the hero Emrys Pendragon to her father’s door, Languoreth finds love with one of his warriors. Her deep connection to Maelgwn is forged by enchantment, but she is promised in marriage to Rhydderch, son of a Christian king.
-
-
Lost no more!
- By Beckersly on 09-13-18
By: Signe Pike
-
A Shadow on the Glass
- By: Ian Irvine
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once there were three worlds, each with their own human species. Then, fleeing out of the void came a fourth species, the Charon. Desperate, on the edge of extinction, they changed the balance between the worlds forever. Karan, a sensitive with a troubled heritage, is forced to steal an ancient relic in repayment of a debt. It turns out to be the Mirror of Aachan, a twisted, deceitful thing that remembers everything it has ever seen.
-
-
Not quite good enough.
- By Scott S. on 03-13-12
By: Ian Irvine
-
The Journey
- By: Isobelle Carmody
- Narrated by: Isobelle Carmody
- Length: 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bonus never-before-released short story by best-selling author Isobelle Carmody. Before the apocolyptic Great White - and the regressive theology that ruled the decimated population in its wake - the city of Uropa is a gleaming metropolis devoted wholly to materialistic consumption.
-
-
The Journey
- By Kiba Snowpaw on 09-27-23
By: Isobelle Carmody
-
Ammonite
- By: Nicola Griffith
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Change or die: the only options available on the Durallium Company-owned planet GP. The planet's deadly virus had killed most of the original colonists - and changed the rest irrevocably. Centuries after the colony had lost touch with the rest of humanity, the Company returned to exploit GP, and its forces found themselves fighting for their lives. Afraid of spreading the virus, the Company had left its remaining employees in place, afraid and isolated from the natives.
-
-
Women Are People
- By DC on 11-17-20
By: Nicola Griffith
-
Nightglass
- By: Liane Merciel
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the grim nation of Nidal, carefully chosen children are trained to practice dark magic, summoning forth creatures of horror and shadow. Isiem is one such student, a promising young shadowcaster whose powers are the envy of his peers. Upon coming of age, he's dispatched on a mission of genocide against the winged humanoids of Devii's Perch. Yet as the body count rises and Isiem comes face to face with the people he's exterminating, lines begin to blur, and the shadowcaster must ask himself who the real monsters are....
-
-
Riveting
- By david on 11-23-15
By: Liane Merciel
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Matrix
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.
-
-
Wonderful story well written and narratives
- By ReallyNelie on 09-25-21
By: Lauren Groff
-
Florida
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Lauren Groff
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a decade ago, Groff moved to her adopted home state of Florida. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center. Storms, snakes, and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats and mysteries are of a human, emotional, and psychological nature. Groff's evocative storytelling and knife-sharp intelligence first transport the listener, then jolt us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty....
-
-
Don't buy the audiobook
- By Ethan Gouveia on 06-16-18
By: Lauren Groff
-
Fates and Furies
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Will Damron, Julia Whelan
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Florida and Matrix, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives.
-
-
Paean to Marriage, Mythology and Theatre
- By W Perry Hall on 09-20-15
By: Lauren Groff
-
Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
-
-
Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
-
Monsters of Templeton
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Nicole Roberts
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of a disastrous affair with her married archeology professor, brilliant Wilhelmina Cooper arrives back at the doorstep of her hippie mother-turned-born-again-Christian's house in Templeton, New York - a storybook town her ancestors founded on the shores of Lake Glimmerglass. Upon her arrival, a prehistoric monster surfaces in the lake, bringing a feeding frenzy to the quiet town. And Willie learns she has a mystery father her mother has kept secret for Willie's entire life.
-
-
Nonsense
- By Diana on 02-19-08
By: Lauren Groff
-
Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Groff presents nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a 20th-century American woman. In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime---or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations.
-
-
Lauren Groff is amazing!
- By Pedro Ramirez on 11-10-15
By: Lauren Groff
-
Matrix
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.
-
-
Wonderful story well written and narratives
- By ReallyNelie on 09-25-21
By: Lauren Groff
-
Florida
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Lauren Groff
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a decade ago, Groff moved to her adopted home state of Florida. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center. Storms, snakes, and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats and mysteries are of a human, emotional, and psychological nature. Groff's evocative storytelling and knife-sharp intelligence first transport the listener, then jolt us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty....
-
-
Don't buy the audiobook
- By Ethan Gouveia on 06-16-18
By: Lauren Groff
-
Fates and Furies
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Will Damron, Julia Whelan
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Florida and Matrix, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives.
-
-
Paean to Marriage, Mythology and Theatre
- By W Perry Hall on 09-20-15
By: Lauren Groff
-
Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
-
-
Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
-
Monsters of Templeton
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Nicole Roberts
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of a disastrous affair with her married archeology professor, brilliant Wilhelmina Cooper arrives back at the doorstep of her hippie mother-turned-born-again-Christian's house in Templeton, New York - a storybook town her ancestors founded on the shores of Lake Glimmerglass. Upon her arrival, a prehistoric monster surfaces in the lake, bringing a feeding frenzy to the quiet town. And Willie learns she has a mystery father her mother has kept secret for Willie's entire life.
-
-
Nonsense
- By Diana on 02-19-08
By: Lauren Groff
-
Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Groff presents nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a 20th-century American woman. In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime---or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations.
-
-
Lauren Groff is amazing!
- By Pedro Ramirez on 11-10-15
By: Lauren Groff
-
This Other Eden
- By: Paul Harding
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.
-
-
Painfully overwritten
- By WPH on 02-24-23
By: Paul Harding
-
Humanly Possible
- Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Humanism is an expansive tradition of thought that places shared humanity, cultural vibrancy, and moral responsibility at the center of our lives. For centuries, this worldview has inspired people to make their choices by principles of freethinking, intellectual inquiry, fellow feeling, and optimism. In this sweeping new history, Sarah Bakewell, herself a lifelong humanist, illuminates the very personal, individual, and, well, human matter of humanism and takes listeners on a grand intellectual adventure.
-
-
A glimmer of hope
- By RAY MONTECALVO on 04-14-23
By: Sarah Bakewell
-
The Maniac
- By: Benjamin Labatut
- Narrated by: Gergo Danka, Eva Magyar
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
-
-
Gergo Danka and Eva Magyar are excellent narrators
- By Barbara S on 11-04-23
By: Benjamin Labatut
-
North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
-
-
An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
The Story She Left Behind
- A Novel
- By: Patti Callahan Henry
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Theo Solomon
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.
-
To Die Beautiful
- A Novel
- By: Buzzy Jackson
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1940 and Hannie Schaft is a shy nineteen-year-old law student living in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands with ambitious goals for her future. But dreams die in wartime, and Hannie’s closest friends are no longer safe as fascism insidiously rises in her country. Hiding them is not enough. Hannie may be young but she can’t stand aside as the menace of Nazi evil tightens its grip. Driven by love and moral outrage, Hannie soon becomes an armed member of the Dutch Resistance movement.
-
-
Compelling and incredible story of resistance
- By redwood on 12-22-23
By: Buzzy Jackson
-
Poor Deer
- A Novel
- By: Claire Oshetsky
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died. No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic—that always end happily.
-
-
Self Forgiveness
- By Rummyfun on 03-08-24
By: Claire Oshetsky
-
Beyond the Door of No Return
- A Novel
- By: David Diop, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Dion Graham, Mark Bramhall, Adenrele Ojo, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman’s name: Maram. The key to this mysterious woman’s identity is Adanson’s unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant.
-
-
A lovely love story
- By Jake Greenberg on 01-28-24
By: David Diop, and others
-
This House of Grief
- The Story of a Murder Trial
- By: Helen Garner
- Narrated by: Kate Hood
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This House of Grief is a heartbreaking audiobook by one of Australia's most admired authors. Anyone can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic plain.
-
-
Riveting
- By MLM SoCal on 11-05-23
By: Helen Garner
-
Ordinary Wolves
- A Novel
- By: Seth Kantner
- Narrated by: Neill Thorne
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what any of us has known: Inhuman cold, the taste of rancid salmon shared with shivering sled dogs, hunkering in a sod igloo while blizzards moan overhead. But this is the only world Cutuk Hawcley has ever known. Born and raised in the Arctic, he has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. And yet, though he idolizes the indigenous hunters who have taught him how to survive, when he travels to the nearby Inupiaq village, he is jeered and pummeled by the native children for being white.
-
-
Solitary and Moving
- By Aakatchaq on 08-05-24
By: Seth Kantner
-
How to Say Babylon
- A Memoir
- By: Safiya Sinclair
- Narrated by: Safiya Sinclair
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure. For him, a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.
-
-
Beautifully written. Powerful story.
- By Brenda Barbour on 10-22-23
By: Safiya Sinclair
What listeners say about The Vaster Wilds
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bebe Guill
- 09-17-23
Wow
Compelling and deeply moving story, beautifully performed. A true spiritual journey through wilderness told astonishingly in the voice and heart of a small “nothing” girl. Lauren Goff is a master storyteller and gifted writer.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jennifer
- 09-23-23
Slow torture written too hastily
I wanted to love this book, and I can see why people think Groff is a talented writer. Most of the book is the minutia of hunger and pain, punctuated by moments that strain credulity A hideously bloated dead dog is lying in the middle of the road. Instead of walking around it, she chooses to leap over it, barefoot, grazing it with her toe, it explodes all over her, and she vomits on herself. She is utterly starved and exhausted, yet goes to the river, and immediately spears three fish in a row. As they flap around on land, she bludgeons them to death. Why? How? She gets smallpox on top of her starvation and exhaustion, yet accidentally walks up a cliff. At the end of hours of this, she becomes a survival genius in one paragraph, building a house, making traps, weaving doors, skinning animals, and making clothes, etc. There’s a horrible scene with a child I wish I had never read and that is simply not believable. The author includes grand statements about losing faith in God and humanity, the unforgivable decimation of indigenous culture, and the wilderness that feel thrown in with a litany of pioneer tropes in a tone of hyper-dramatic grandiloquence. Too extra for me from start to finish.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 09-16-23
left in tears, grateful tears
All I want is for a book to make me cry. And this one did. The ending is pure poetry—or even better... prose worthy of Virginia Woolf. Groff is truly, and inarguably, one of the great geniuses of our time. The narrator—LaVoy, does her a great service. I love reading Lauren Groff, but I am so glad I listened to this. I think listening made the book even more powerful. It felt like a sermon. I have heard Lauren Groff say that literature is her religion. And it is mine too. This book will forever be in my cannon.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- S Peddie
- 09-19-23
Lauren has done it again! Excellent!
Lauren Groff paints with words, crafting a mesmerizing tapestry of emotions, vivid imagery, and compelling characters. Every page is a journey through landscapes both physical and emotional, taking the reader on an exploration of human connection, nature's raw beauty, and the intricate dance of life and loss.
Groff's prose is poetic and evocative. She has a remarkable ability to breathe life into her settings, making the wilds come alive.
A quick note for other "speed listeners" out there - because the poetic prose and great descriptions, I do not recommend listening to "The Vaster Wilds" on any speed greater than 1.0. I listened to it at a faster speed the first time and then re-listened to it at 1.0 and it was so much better.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Natasha
- 11-12-23
Superb in every way.
So beautifully written and performed - what a gift this book is! I was equal parts riveted by the story and in awe of the writing itself, throughout from start to finish. A rarity.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- kaleidoscope school
- 11-20-23
Astonishing!
What an incredible story and wonderful narration! An exploration of mortality, immortality, good, evil, spirituality, and survival.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- E.K. Lanier
- 09-22-23
Incredibly beautiful language
Remarkable tale of faith and resilience, a young girl flees a fort under siege riddled with starvation and inhumanity. What she endures and overcomes are deeply inspiring.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- VIRGINIA A. LEEN
- 12-24-23
Riveting
I couldn’t put this down until it was finished. Very unexpected story, takes the reader to a very specific place and time in near-excruciating detail. I wanted to know more and it ended too soon. Great narration.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Laura Bryant
- 01-11-24
Stunning
Groff has written an impeccable meditation on what it means to be human and a woman. her prose and LaVoy's narration are a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. This will stay with me for a long time.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- CCL
- 02-23-24
A story of survival like no other.
Beautiful and powerful. Thank you, Lauren Groff and well done to the narrator. Completely captivating!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!