Farther Off from Heaven
A Memoir
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Farther Off from Heaven
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Narrated by:
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David Marantz
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By:
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William Humphrey
About this listen
William Humphrey’s acclaimed memoir is a richly detailed portrait of small-town Texas and a poignant account of the tragedy that shaped the author’s life.
At three o’clock in the morning on July 5, 1937, William Humphrey awoke to his mother’s urgent cry: "Get dressed as quick as you can! Your daddy has been hurt." Rushing to the doctor’s office, mother and son arrived to find Clarence Humphrey battered beyond recognition: his chest crushed, his face bruised black and caked with blood, his teeth shattered. He soon drew his final breath.
In that terrible moment, 13-year-old William knew that nothing would ever be the same again: "I felt slip from me in that moment not only the certainty of my future but the fixity of my past. It was as if I had been wakened out of my childhood." He moved with his mother to Dallas soon after, and although he set his classic novels, Home from the Hill and The Ordways, in his hometown of Clarksville, he would not return for 32 years.
A masterpiece of autobiography, Farther Off from Heaven is the fiercely honest, exquisitely crafted story of William Humphrey’s childhood and the sudden end of his innocence.
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
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Pale Horse, Pale Rider
- Three Short Novels
- By: Katherine Anne Porter
- Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4 out of 5 stars 55
The classic 1939 collection of three novellas by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author and journalist, including the famous title story set during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Some of the most brilliant prose ever written
- By Anonymous User on 03-21-23
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A Wayside Tavern
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4 out of 5 stars 31
A Wayside Tavern tells the story of a Suffolk drinking place from the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, until the present day. The Roman veteran, crippled and left behind, worshipped Mithras, so the place became known as the One Bull and down through the centuries it became a clearing house for contraband, a miniature Hell Fire Club, a fashionable hotel, a mere pub. Across the yard, was the church of St Cerdic, king and martyr, who fought the Danes and was famous for the miracles performed at his shrine.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An enjoyable tale
- By Gordon on 10-07-11
By: Norah Lofts
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Belle Cora
- A Novel
- By: Phillip Margulies
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat, Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In the home where Arabella Godwin was raised it is forbidden to speak her name, and her picture is turned to the wall. But in the turbulent America of the 1850s, everyone knows her as "Belle Cora", madam of San Francisco's finest bordello. Judges and senators do her bidding; a vicious newspaper editor plots her downfall; a preacher looks at her from across his pulpit and tries to forget that once she was his wife. Merchant's daughter, farm girl, prostitute, mother - the only thing that never changes is her tireless pursuit of the one man who can see her for who she really is.
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5 out of 5 stars
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excellent
- By Patricia on 05-15-20
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Winesburg, Ohio
- By: Sherwood Anderson
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 164
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Story4 out of 5 stars 163
Winesburg, Ohio is a little-known masterpiece that forever changed the course of American storytelling. At the center of this collection of stories stands George Willard, an earnest young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle who sets out to gather the town’s daily news. He ends up discovering the town’s deepest secrets as one by one, the townsfolk confide their hopes, dreams, and fears to the reporter. In their recollections of first loves and last rites, of sprawling farms and winding country roads, the town rises vividly - and poignantly - to life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Isolation, Loneliness, Love & Midwest Grotesque
- By Darwin8u on 06-27-13
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Black Boy
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 374
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 329
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Story5 out of 5 stars 328
Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding
- By Trevin Harvey on 11-11-20
By: Richard Wright
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Mercy Among the Children
- A Novel
- By: David Adams Richards
- Narrated by: Bernard Clark
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4 out of 5 stars 45
Sydney Henderson is a truly great man. As a young man, Sydney, believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact with God, promising never to harm another if the boy's life is spared. In the years that follow, the almost pathologically gentle Sydney holds true to his promise - at terrible cost to himself and his family. Stunningly beautiful and haunting, scenes from this magisterial novel will remain etched in the mind forever.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Epic story
- By jhar14 on 06-04-22
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Dalva
- A Novel
- By: Jim Harrison
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey, Stacey Glemboski
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born, and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at 45 she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians.
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5 out of 5 stars
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As a woman, I can finally appreciate Jim Harrison with this book.
- By kathryn gray on 09-11-24
By: Jim Harrison
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The Town
- A Novel of the Snopes Family
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 120
The story of Flem Snopes' ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, this is the second volume of Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Accessible Faulkner
- By Doug on 03-28-11
By: William Faulkner
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Rain of Gold
- By: Victor Villaseñor
- Narrated by: Johnny Rey Diaz
- Length: 30 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 464
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 416
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Story5 out of 5 stars 417
Rain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family and destiny that pulses with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa's revolution to the days of Prohibition in California.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thank you Victor again!
- By cynthia g on 09-24-20
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The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
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Lighthouse
- By: Eugenia Price
- Narrated by: Tessa Richards
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Raised in post-Revolution Granville, Massachusetts, James Gould could only imagine the beauty and warmth of the lands to the south. It was there that he longed to build bridges and lighthouses from his very own designs and plans. His gripping story unfolds as Gould follows his dream to the raw settlement of Bangor on the Penobscot River, St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia, lawless Spanish East Florida, and back - at last and finally - to St. Simons.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Re: Wonderful Story
- By Cmorgan on 01-27-23
By: Eugenia Price
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
- By: Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 6,271
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,487
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Story4 out of 5 stars 5,489
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.
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1 out of 5 stars
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What in the heck happened?????
- By Melinda on 02-05-14
By: Gabriel García Márquez, and others
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Oil!
- By: Upton Sinclair
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 877
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 663
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Story4 out of 5 stars 670
As he did so masterfully in The Jungle, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Upton Sinclair interweaves social criticism with human tragedy to create an unforgettable portrait of Southern California's early oil industry. Enraged by the oil scandals of the Harding administration in the 1920s, Sinclair tells a gripping tale of avarice, corruption, and class warfare, featuring a cavalcade of characters, including senators, oil magnates, Hollywood film starlets, and a crusading evangelist.
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5 out of 5 stars
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an outstanding book
- By Gregory on 05-18-08
By: Upton Sinclair
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Twelve Years a Slave
- By: Solomon Northup
- Narrated by: Stephen L. Vernon
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 535
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 468
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Story5 out of 5 stars 467
Twelve Years a Slave is an account of actual events that took place in the life of Solomon Northup, during the pre-Civil War era of the 1840s. It follows the trials and tribulations of an educated African American man that was born into freedom and later kidnapped, taken away from his family, and forced into slavery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What a great book!!!
- By Andrew Robbin on 09-07-14
By: Solomon Northup
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Freckles
- By: Gene Stratton-Porter
- Narrated by: Mary Starkey
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 288
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 232
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 238
Freckles, a plucky young man, lands a job as a watchman for a lumber company that logs timber in a mysterious forest swamp called the Limberlost.
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4 out of 5 stars
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tear jerking, poor narration
- By Nadene on 09-01-12