Hurry on Down
Valancourt 20th Century Classics, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Hannibal Hills
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By:
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John Wain
About this listen
Charles Lumley feels that he has been born in captivity - the captivity of his smugly conventional bourgeois upbringing. Now he has just graduated from university, only to make the discouraging discovery that his education has rendered him unfit for any kind of useful employment. Wondering what to do with the rest of his life and longing to escape, a chance remark overheard in a pub sets him off on a picaresque and hilarious tour of 1950s Britain. He undergoes a string of comic misadventures as he works as a window cleaner, a drug trafficker, a hospital orderly, and a chauffeur, all while trying to find his place in the world and win the love of the beautiful Veronica Roderick.
John Wain (1925-1994) was one of the great English men of letters of the 20th century, a prolific novelist, poet, biographer, and critic whose many accolades included the Somerset Maugham Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Whitbread Award. Hurry on Down (1953), his first novel, ushered in a new kind of English novel and paved the way for many later classics, including Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (1954), and John Braine's Room at the Top (1957).
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 758
Published in 1922, Fitzgerald's second novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda in 1930, "was all true."
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5 out of 5 stars
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i loved it
- By Emily on 01-20-05
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The Christmas Card Crime
- And Other Stories
- By: Martin Edwards
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin, Anne Dover
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4 out of 5 stars 88
A Christmas party is punctuated by a gunshot under a policeman’s watchful eye. A jewel heist is planned amidst the glitz and glamour of Oxford Street’s Christmas shopping. And lost in a snowstorm, a man finds a motive for murder.... This collection of mysteries explores the darker side of the festive season, from unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow to the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Aahhh... Just The Right Blend Of Mystery, Murder And Christmas.!!
- By John on 12-04-18
By: Martin Edwards
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Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,064
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 943
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Story4 out of 5 stars 936
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 224
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Story4 out of 5 stars 179
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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Yours Until Death
- Varg Veum
- By: Gunnar Staalesen
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4 out of 5 stars 79
An unbearably tense novel of revenge, murder, bereavement and the destructive force of passion. The single-mother families of the isolated community under the shadow of the Pyderhorn, Bergen's greatest mountain, are being terrorised by a teenage gang. But teenage violence is nothing compared to what awaits detective Varg Veum when he gets to know the blue-eyed Wenche Andersen.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Scandinavian Mystery!
- By Peoko on 07-12-17
By: Gunnar Staalesen
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Fire and Hemlock
- By: Diana Wynne Jones
- Narrated by: Gemma Dawson
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
Polly has two sets of memories.... One is normal: school, home, friends. The other, stranger memories begin nine years ago, when she was 10 and gate-crashed an odd funeral in the mansion near her grandmother's house. Polly's just beginning to recall the sometimes marvelous, sometimes frightening adventures she embarked on with Tom Lynn after that. And then she did something terrible, and everything changed. But what did she do? Why can't she remember? Polly must uncover the secret, or her true love - and perhaps Polly herself - will be lost.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally!!!
- By Jamie D. on 07-10-21
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Life for Sale
- By: Yukio Mishima
- Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests and what follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots - even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself enmeshed in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the crosshairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime syndicate.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Book is good - Narration is just terrible
- By Vyacheslav Varlakov on 03-12-21
By: Yukio Mishima
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The Bermondsey Bookshop
- By: Mary Gibson
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 160
Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss' struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets. Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn't long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A glimpse into the past
- By Luci-Lu on 10-27-21
By: Mary Gibson
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The Shadow Lines
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Raj Varma
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, Ghosh’s radiant second novel follows two families - one English, one Bengali - as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian-born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Narrator Doesn't Know How to Pronounce
- By Amazon Customer on 08-27-11
By: Amitav Ghosh
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard E. Grant
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 219
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 192
Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gordon's Grey World is Colored with Grant
- By Timothy on 09-25-11
By: George Orwell
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Anthem
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,909
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,683
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,688
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Triumphant! A beautiful molding of the mind.
- By Kari on 02-17-16
By: Ayn Rand
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Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 893
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 787
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 786
The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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Dolphin Junction
- Stories
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: David Thorpe, Emma Powell, Gerard Doyle, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
Now, for the first time, Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume. In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five stand-alone nerve-racking and thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wicked treats
- By A+A on 11-24-21
By: Mick Herron
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Maurice
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Peter Firth
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,155
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 988
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 991
'Ah for darkness...not the darkness of a house which coops up a man among furniture, but the darkness where he can be free!' Maurice Hall knows he must choose between living life in the shadows or denying himself a chance at love and fulfilment. Aware of his attraction to the same sex, in a time where it was considered unlawful and immoral to have homosexual desires, Maurice must decide whether to battle or submit to a prejudiced 20th-century English society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally!!! It's past time!
- By Christopher P. on 11-18-10
By: E. M. Forster
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The Charioteer
- By: Mary Renault
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 253
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 238
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 236
After surviving the Dunkirk retreat, Laurie Odell, a young homosexual, critically examines his unorthodox lifestyle and personal relationships, as he falls in love with a young conscientious objector and becomes involved with a circle of world-weary gay men.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Gay Classic!
- By Christopher on 02-05-16
By: Mary Renault
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William - The Pirate
- By: Richmal Crompton
- Narrated by: Martin Jarvis
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
William Brown, the loveable rogue created by Richmal Crompton in the 1930s, is as well-received and enjoyed today as he was almost 80 years ago. Martin Jarvis has long been the voice of William, and brings a youthful sense of joy and a childlike excitement to the reading.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best William Book
- By RNS on 12-24-13
By: Richmal Crompton