Absolute Friends (Abridged)
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Absolute Friends (Abridged)
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Narrated by:
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John le Carré
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By:
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John le Carré
About this listen
Absolute Friends is a superbly paced novel spanning 56 years, a theatrical masterstroke of tragi-comic writing and a savage fable of our times, almost of our hours.
The friends of the title are Ted Mundy, British soldier’s son born 1947 in a new independent Pakistan, and Sasha, refugee son of an East German Lutheran pastor and his wife, who have sought sanctuary in the West. The two men first meet as students in riot-torn West Berlin of the late '60s, again in the grimy looking-glass of Cold War espionage and, most terribly, in today’s world of terror.
Spanning 56 years, Absolute Friends is a savage fable of our times.
©2010 David Cornwell (P)2015 Hodder & StoughtonListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 491
Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949. The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin's repressive state - or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps, and almost certain death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
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Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,885
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,545
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,550
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
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Topaz
- By: Leon Uris
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 104
On the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Paris, 1962, Devereaux and Nordstrom uncover Soviet plans to ship nuclear arms. But when nobody acts after sharing his findings, Devereaux becomes the target of an assassination attempt and soon realizes the plot extends far beyond Cuba - and himself. A thrilling and well-paced novel filled with Cold War intrigue, Topaz features two agents on a journey around the world to save NATO and themselves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A spy thriller in disguise
- By Shmuel M on 04-14-19
By: Leon Uris
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The Jewel in the Crown
- The Raj Quartet, Book 1
- By: Paul Scott
- Narrated by: Richard Brown
- Length: 22 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
The first volume in Paul Scott's historical tour-de-force opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for self-rule. In the Mayapore gardens, Daphne Manners, daughter of the provincial governor, leaves her Indian lover, who will soon be arrested for her alleged rape.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Superb writing, subverted by spiritless narration
- By mgale on 10-13-10
By: Paul Scott
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Zoo Station
- John Russell WWII Spy, Book 1
- By: David Downing
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
By 1939, Anglo-American journalist John Russell has spent over a decade in Berlin, where his son lives with his mother. He writes human-interest pieces for British and American papers, avoiding the investigative journalism that could get him deported. But as World War II approaches, he faces having to leave his son as well as his girlfriend of several years, a beautiful German starlet. When an acquaintance from his old communist days approaches him to do some work for the Soviets, Russell is reluctant, but he is unable to resist the offer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Overall great listen!
- By Patricia on 02-28-24
By: David Downing
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Scoop
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 309
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 275
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Story4 out of 5 stars 274
In Scoop, surreptitiously dubbed "a newspaper adventure", Waugh flays Fleet Street and the social pastimes of its war correspondants as he tells how William Boot became the star of British super-journalism and how, leaving part of his shirt in the claws of the lovely Katchen, he returned from Ishmaelia to London as the "Daily's Beast's" more accoladed overseas reporter.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Well Written & Funny but Lacking
- By Michael on 07-19-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
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The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 378
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4 out of 5 stars 133
The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
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The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,088
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,659
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,667
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
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Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,018
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 712
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 711
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Dreamers of the Day
- A Novel
- By: Mary Doria Russell
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 188
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4 out of 5 stars 139
A 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as an historic Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - enters into the company of the historic luminaries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Little Big Woman
- By W.Denis on 10-02-08
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The Unlikely Spy
- By: Daniel Silva
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,283
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,673
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,671
“In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable - a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Unlikely Spy
- By Margaret on 12-14-09
By: Daniel Silva
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The Quiet American
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Joseph Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,115
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 935
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 930
Alden Pyle, an idealistic young American, is sent to Vietnam to promote democracy amidst the intrigue and violence of the French war with the Vietminh, while his friend, Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, looks on.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Terrible narrator nearly derails Greene novel.
- By Richard on 07-12-12
By: Graham Greene
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Sign of the Cross: A Collins-Burke Mystery, Book 1
- By: Anne Emery
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 279
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 251
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Story4 out of 5 stars 252
Monty Collins is a sharp-tongued public defender who just wants to represent an upstanding character for a change. A priest with something to hide isn't quite what he had hoped for, but when the literate, arrogant, and tight-lipped Father Brennan Burke is implicated in the strange murder of a young woman, Monty doesn't just take the case - the case takes him. When Burke won't come clean, Monty is forced to play private detective, traveling into his client's past. Things look good for the case until another body is found....
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4 out of 5 stars
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Hybrid Mystery
- By connie on 07-31-12
By: Anne Emery
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The Ghost Writer
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Roger Rees
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 938
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 595
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Story4 out of 5 stars 598
Adam Lang has been Britain’s longest serving—and most controversial—prime minister of the last half century. As pressure mounts for Lang to complete this memoirs, he hires a professional ghostwriter to finish the book. As he sets to work, the ghostwriter discovers many more secrets than Lang intends to reveal, secrets with the power to alter world politics - secrets with the power to kill.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Too close to the truth?
- By carl801 on 11-24-07
By: Robert Harris
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Put Out More Flags
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4 out of 5 stars 55
Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life - his sister, his mother, and his mistress. When Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and sets forth to enjoy his finest hour - as a war hero. Basil's instincts for self-preservation come to the fore as he insinuates himself into the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wickedly Funny
- By Chelz on 07-25-19
By: Evelyn Waugh
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Eye of the Storm
- Sean Dillon, Book 1
- By: Jack Higgins
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 326
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 283
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Story4 out of 5 stars 279
Former allies in the IRA, Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan have chosen different paths. Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses…and brilliant mastery of espionage. Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening - and true - event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.
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2 out of 5 stars
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YAAA--W--N
- By Trudy Owens on 02-03-15
By: Jack Higgins