A Very French Christmas
The Greatest French Holiday Stories of All Time
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A Very French Christmas
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Narrated by:
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Jean Brassard
About this listen
A continuation of the popular Very Christmas Series, this collection brings together the best French Christmas stories of all time in an elegant and vibrant collection featuring classics by Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet, plus stories by the esteemed 20th-century author Irène Némirovsky and contemporary writers Dominique Fabre and Jean-Philippe Blondel.
With a holiday spirit conveyed through sparkling Paris streets, opulent feasts, wandering orphans, kindly monks, homesick soldiers, oysters, crayfish, ham, bonbons, flickering desire, and more than a little wine, this collection encapsulates the holiday spirit. This is Christmas à la française - delicious, intense, and unexpected, proving that nobody does Christmas like the French.
©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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During the hectic Christmas season, slow down with these heartwarming stories from some of literature’s most beloved writers. In this collection, listeners will discover lesser-known but tender stories and poems from classic authors they know and love. Each selection celebrates the beauty, mystery, and joy found in the season that commemorates Christ’s birth. A Vintage Christmas includes stories from Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and many more great writers....
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 208
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Story4 out of 5 stars 209
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4 out of 5 stars
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Dense & Difficult But Rewarding
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At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Timeless
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3 out of 5 stars
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-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 677
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 610
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 608
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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Shadows on the Rock
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
In 1697, Quebec is an island of French civilization perched on a bare gray rock amid a wilderness of trackless forests. For many of its settlers, Quebec is a place of exile, so remote that an entire winter passes without a word from home. But to 12-year-old Cécile Auclair, the rock is home, where even the formidable Governor Frontenac entertains children in his palace and beavers lie beside the lambs in a Christmas créche.
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5 out of 5 stars
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wonderful
- By carol perez on 05-18-21
By: Willa Cather
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Oblomov
- By: Ivan Goncharov
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 20 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 75
A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing. Not that he leads a dissolute life of extravagance, balls and entertainment. Instead he is a dreamer, a sybarite, content above all to spend most of the day supine, in bed. The novel opens with Oblomov thus ensconced, attended only by his dirty, grumbling, indolent servant Zahar, who has looked after him since childhood, catering to his every need.
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5 out of 5 stars
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funny and smart
- By Bennett Weiss on 07-29-20
By: Ivan Goncharov
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A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems
- By: Charles Dickens, L. M. Montgomery, Mark Twain, and others
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
During the hectic Christmas season, slow down with these heartwarming stories from some of literature’s most beloved writers. In this collection, listeners will discover lesser-known but tender stories and poems from classic authors they know and love. Each selection celebrates the beauty, mystery, and joy found in the season that commemorates Christ’s birth. A Vintage Christmas includes stories from Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and many more great writers....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful Audible Rendition
- By Sailor Family on 01-18-20
By: Charles Dickens, and others
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A Tale of Love and Darkness
- By: Amos Oz
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 343
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 302
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 302
It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.
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1 out of 5 stars
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His life was interesting, but not his memoir
- By DR Harle on 01-27-19
By: Amos Oz
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Doctor Zhivago
- By: Boris Pasternak, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator, Richard Pevear - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 751
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 643
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Story4 out of 5 stars 639
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is a new translation of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Russian Philosophical Feast
- By Syd Young on 02-16-13
By: Boris Pasternak, and others
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The Leopard
- A Novel
- By: Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Archibald Colquhuon - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4 out of 5 stars 90
Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Timeless
- By Robert Massarella on 12-05-23
By: Giuseppe di Lampedusa, and others
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The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 31 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
From Vladimir Nabokov, the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and the 1950s, these 68 tales — 14 of which have been translated into English for the first time - display all the shades of Nabokov’s imagination.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Kaleidoscope of Nabokov Bábochkas
- By Darwin8u on 01-11-15
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Confessions of Max Tivoli
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 256
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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5 out of 5 stars
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odd premise, but it works!
- By Sean Dunnahoo on 03-03-04
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Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates
- By: Mary Mapes Dodge
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Can young Hans Brinker win the silver skates that are the only hope of saving his family from ruin? Hans and his little sister Gretel live in Holland, a colorful and exciting country of windmills and great canals. Unfortunately, the Brinkers are very poor and their father is ill, and Hans wonders whether they'll survive the long, harsh winter. Then he finds out about an ice skating race, and the prize - a pair of shiny silver skates - that might help his family survive.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Entertaining except for the digressions
- By Ellen Spertus on 03-13-03
By: Mary Mapes Dodge
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Les Misérables
- Penguin Classics
- By: Christine Donougher, Victor Hugo, Robert Tombs
- Narrated by: Adeel Akhtar, Natalie Simpson, Adrian Scarborough, and others
- Length: 65 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 220
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 193
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Story5 out of 5 stars 191
Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Policeman, Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Great Translation, 5 Great Narrators
- By Rain Wiegartner on 06-07-20
By: Christine Donougher, and others
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Claude & Camille
- A Novel of Monet
- By: Stephanie Cowell
- Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 216
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 183
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Story4 out of 5 stars 179
In the mid-19th century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his fathers nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his fathers will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.
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5 out of 5 stars
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As a painter
- By janice hedwall on 03-08-16
By: Stephanie Cowell
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Magic Flutes
- By: Eva Ibbotson
- Narrated by: Kate Lock
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Spring, 1922. Tessa is a beautiful, tiny, dark-eyed princess who’s given up her duties to follow her heart and work backstage at the Viennese opera. She keeps her true identity a well-guarded secret, but when a wealthy, handsome Englishman discovers this bewitching urchin backstage, Tessa’s two lives collide - and in escaping her inheritance, she finds her destiny....
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4 out of 5 stars
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delightful story spoiled by the reader
- By A Lennox on 01-09-24
By: Eva Ibbotson
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Gone with the Wind
- By: Margaret Mitchell
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 49 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 14,951
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 12,806
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Story5 out of 5 stars 12,811
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold. Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire....
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5 out of 5 stars
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not to miss audible experience
- By dallas on 12-08-09
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Mother Carey's Chickens
- By: Kate Douglas Wiggin
- Narrated by: Anne Hancock
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
The sudden death of the father of the family results in the drastic reduction of the Careys' income and they must leave their comfortable home in Boston. Nancy Carey, the eldest, recalls a vacation in Maine when they all picnicked in the garden of a big, vacant house that her father loved. She discovers that the house is available, the rent is cheap, and persuades her mother that life in The Yellow House in Beulah, Maine is the perfect place to begin their new life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A very cozy book =)
- By Camilla on 03-01-17