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Narrated by:
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Karen Commins
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By:
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Edna Ferber
About this listen
As a child, Josie Fifer always spoke in front of crowds and liked to make people laugh. She thought she would be an actress on the stage. However, her life changed in a freak accident. Can she find happiness and fulfillment in a new career? Although the story is over 100 years old, it offers an important truth that is still relevant to the modern listener. Rather than rely on dialogue to advance the plot, noted American Edna Ferber is an exceptional storyteller who delights and entertains the listener with narrative. Her stories featuring strong heroines are as fresh and original today as when they were written. Ferber won the Pulitzer Prize for Novel in 1925 and may be best known for her book Show Boat, which was adapted into a successful and long-running musical. Cheerful by Request
was produced and narrated by Karen Commins, who is proud to present the first unabridged edition of this American classic story on Audible.Public Domain (P)2014 Karen ComminsListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,146
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 861
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 873
We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three people who demand the right to live their own lives. At its center is a girl whose passionate love is her fortress against the cruelty and oppression of a totalitarian state. Rand said of this book: "It is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Emotionally intense, historically authentic
- By Geoffrey on 08-14-08
By: Ayn Rand
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Grand Central
- Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion
- By: Melanie Benjamin, Amanda Hodgkinson, Pam Jenoff, and others
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Grand Central: Memories
- By ZacharyKindle Customer on 05-03-17
By: Melanie Benjamin, and others
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Main Street
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 195
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Story4 out of 5 stars 132
Widely hailed as a milestone in American literature, Sinclair Lewis' Main Street vividly describes a country on the verge of massive change, with traditional values being threatened by progress. The novel's heroine, Carol Milford, is a highly educated, ambitious woman who plans to join a newly enlightened society. But after marrying a small-town doctor, she finds herself trapped in the role of a dutiful wife. Carol's desires for social change conflict with the security of her comfortable married life, as she struggles to understand the cost of conformity...and rebellion. As relevant today as it was upon its 1920 publication, Main Street is both a masterful piece of writing and a fascinating microcosm of America's social evolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Delightful reading of an excellent book
- By Steve Bird on 06-14-05
By: Sinclair Lewis
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Laughter in the Dark
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 132
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Death is often the point of life's joke
- By Darwin8u on 05-19-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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King, Queen, Knave
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 48
This novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing emporium. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the thin, awkward, myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle’s condescension in his aunt’s bed.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A non-Euclidean German love triangle.
- By Darwin8u on 04-01-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Marjorie Morningstar
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 28 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 529
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 449
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Story4 out of 5 stars 446
Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern fiction: Marjorie, the pretty 17-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great story with really cheesy narration
- By James on 05-05-12
By: Herman Wouk
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The Street
- By: Ann Petry, Tayari Jones - introduction
- Narrated by: Danielle Deadwyler
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 96
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 96
The classic urban tale of a young Black woman's struggle to raise her son alone amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of 1940s Harlem.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal
- By Amazon Customer on 03-08-25
By: Ann Petry, and others
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Wild Lavender
- By: Belinda Alexandra
- Narrated by: Kate Hood
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 397
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 334
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 332
Simone Fleurier is wrenched from her home on a Provencal lavender farm at the age of 14 after the accidental death of her father. Forced to become a maid at the boarding house of her Aunt Augustine in Marseilles, Simone's life is hard and impoverished. But one of her aunt's boarders, the beautiful Camille Casal, a star at the local music hall, gives Simone a dream: that one day she too will be a famous singer and dancer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Extrodinary Story
- By Wade on 08-16-08
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The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,958
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,981
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7,952
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
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East of the Sun
- By: Julia Gregson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 161
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4 out of 5 stars 113
Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind. Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family and marrying a man she hardly knows. Victoria, her bridesmaid couldn't be happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find herself a husband. And Viva, their inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the India of her childhood, ghosts from the past and freedom.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,218
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,863
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,826
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 364
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 221
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Story4 out of 5 stars 222
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The 42nd Parallel
- By: John Dos Passos
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 292
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 246
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Story4 out of 5 stars 247
This first entry in John Dos Passos's celebrated U.S.A. trilogy paints a grand picture of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful document of an all-too-familiar past
- By Ryan on 06-01-13
By: John Dos Passos
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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 15,245
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 13,094
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Story5 out of 5 stars 13,099
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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Got the Accents Right
- By Noel on 04-27-10
What listeners say about Cheerful by Request
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Trish
- 09-08-14
A sweet historic short story
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
This was a quick and entertainig read about a young girl in the early 1900's who strove to be a cabaret/film star yet wasn't pretty enough. I really enjoyed the frequent acerbic and witty language and the poignant ending. It was nice to read a story of this sort with a female protagonist that wasn't soap opera-ish.
Did Karen Commins do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
She did a fine job, occasionally had a nasal, too inflective tone, but for the most prt this seemed to fit the main characters' personalities.
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
Probably not, sorry!
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