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Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
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Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice
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Publisher's summary
A volume of stories from A. S. Byatt is always a joy, and this one is rich and rare indeed. In the same delectable format as The Matisse Stories and The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, this collection deals with fullest lives.
A scholar pursues an elusive biographer, stumbling upon buried fragments of distant lives; a woman walks out of her previous existence and encounters an ice-blond stranger from a secretive world; a schoolgirl draws a blood-filled picture of Jael; a swimming pool reveals a beauteous monster in its depths.
The settings range from the heat of Provence in summer to the cold forests of Scandinavia, from chalk-strewn classrooms to herb-scented hillsides, from suburban streets to rocky wilds. A marvellous present for all A. S. Byatt fans, this magical collection is also the perfect introduction to one of our finest contemporary writers.
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- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So good!
- By Christopher A. Douglas on 10-24-24
By: Albert Camus
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Crome Yellow
- By: Aldous Huxley
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 170
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4 out of 5 stars 137
One of the greatest prose writers and social commentators of the 20th century, Aldous Huxley here introduces us to a delightfully cynical, comic, and severe group of artists and intellectuals engaged in the most free-thinking and modern kind of talk imaginable. Poetry, occultism, ancestral history, and Italian primitive painting are just a few of the subjects competing for discussion among the amiable cast of eccentrics drawn together at Crome, an intensely English country manor.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bloomsbury in a blender, 1922
- By Adeliese Baumann on 01-02-17
By: Aldous Huxley
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The Parisian
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 166
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4 out of 5 stars 142
A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Overly ambitious
- By Placeholder on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
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Light Years
- By: James Salter
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 147
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4 out of 5 stars 132
This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unfathomable Font of Blue: Life's Serial Goodbyes
- By W Perry Hall on 04-18-19
By: James Salter
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Cocaine Blues
- By: Kerry Greenwood
- Narrated by: Stephanie Daniel
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,039
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,490
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,481
It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A series that just gets better
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 02-01-11
By: Kerry Greenwood
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
- By: V. E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38,569
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 34,392
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34,277
France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever - and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Prose style not to my liking
- By C.V. Cox on 10-18-20
By: V. E. Schwab
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The King in Yellow
- By: Robert W. Chambers
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Gabrielle de Cuir
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 741
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 656
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Story4 out of 5 stars 656
There is a book that is shrouded in mystery. Some even say it's a myth. Within its pages is a play - one that brings madness and despair to all who read it. It is the play of the King in Yellow, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. The King in Yellow is a collection of stories interwoven loosely by the elements of the play, including the central figure himself.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Introduction to Robert Chambers
- By David S. Mathew on 11-23-16
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Tales from the Hinterland
- The Hazel Wood
- By: Melissa Albert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Soler
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Does not disappoint
- By Harley Easton on 02-22-21
By: Melissa Albert
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 169
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 168
Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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The Return of the Soldier
- By: Rebecca West
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4 out of 5 stars 88
In this lyrical and poignant story of a wounded man and the three concerned women who seek to heal him, Rebecca West explores the complexity of the mind and its subtle strategies for coping with life's painful realities. Only when Chris has the courage to face one pivotal moment of truth in his married life will he be able to awaken from his boyish fantasy and become, indeed, "every inch a soldier".
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5 out of 5 stars
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a gem
- By beatrice on 09-08-21
By: Rebecca West
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The Charmed Wife
- By: Olga Grushin
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story4 out of 5 stars 92
Cinderella married the man of her dreams - the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, 13 and a half years later, things have gone badly wrong, and her life is far from perfect. One night, fed up and exhausted, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming. Instead, she wants him dead.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Warning
- By Ijw on 01-26-21
By: Olga Grushin
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Girl in Hyacinth Blue
- By: Susan Vreeland
- Narrated by: Loren Lester, Sheryl Bernstein
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4 out of 5 stars 134
A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.
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4 out of 5 stars
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wonderful
- By Sybil on 04-07-03
By: Susan Vreeland
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The Invasion of Heaven
- Part One of the Newirth Mythology
- By: Michael B. Koep
- Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir, John Rubinstein, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 373
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 343
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Story4 out of 5 stars 342
Psychologist Loche Newirth becomes hunted when he sees a painting that opens a window onto the afterlife. An ancient order of men seeking to control the art pursue him across the world, through centuries, into madness, and beyond. The first part of Michael B. Koep's the Newirth Mythology The Invasion of Heaven is mystery, adventure, myth, betrayal, murder, and madness. Loche Newirth wonders if it was his fall: The 50-foot drop from the rocky cliff to the icy water below. Is this why he has been hallucinating?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good story - well written
- By Amy Q on 05-17-20
By: Michael B. Koep