Imaginings of Years Past
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Narrated by:
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Mike Kuhlman
About this listen
His own ancestry and life very nearly the stuff of novels, it is no wonder Russian writer, philosopher, musical scholar, and politician Vladimir Odoyevsky had left behind an endlessly varied, fascinating, and captivating body of work.
Imaginings of Years Past gives listeners a taste of the strange and wonderful literary legacy left behind by this strange and wonderful man.
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Story
Honoré de Balzac uses his classic style of detail to describe a most controversial setting in his novel Le Pere Goriot. The story takes place in Paris just after the fall of Napoleon in 1819. The story focuses on three characters, Rastignac, a student who wants to try and make it big in the capital, Vautrin, an interesting and funny character who is also quite mysterious, and the main character, Goriot, that carries a heavy burden that only a loving parent would endure.
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A minor masterpiece
- By Jack Rock on 03-04-18
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Letter from an Unknown Woman
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Heather Wood, K. Anderson Yancy
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Immediately following the death of her young son, distraught and heartbroken, a woman sends a heart-wrenching letter to the only man she has ever loved, chronicling their love affair, opening with, "To you, who have never known me."
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Tough 2 Hear With Background Music & Sound Effects
- By DK on 09-19-15
By: Stefan Zweig
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My Name Is Red
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Erdag Goknar - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of 16th-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.
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Complex and interesting
- By Kathleen on 05-13-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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Dracula, My Love
- The Secret Journals of Mina Harker
- By: Syrie James
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Mina Harker is torn between two men. Struggling to hang on to the deep, pure love she's found within her marriage to her husband, Jonathan, she is inexorably drawn into a secret, passionate affair with a charismatic but dangerous lover. This haunted and haunting creature has awakened feelings and desires within her that she has never before known, remaking her as a woman. Although everyone she knows fears him and is pledged to destroy him, Mina sees a side to him that the others cannot.
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Far Better Than I Thought or Hoped For!
- By Troy on 03-27-13
By: Syrie James
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This Dark Endeavor
- The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, Book 1
- By: Kenneth Oppel
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Victor and Konrad are the twin brothers Frankenstein. They are nearly inseparable. Growing up, their lives are filled with imaginary adventures... until the day their adventures turn all too real. They stumble upon The Dark Library, and secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are discovered. Father forbids that they ever enter the room again, but this only peaks Victor's curiosity more. When Konrad falls gravely ill, Victor is not be satisfied with the various doctors his parents have called in to help. He is drawn back to The Dark Library....
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Chilling and oddly poignant
- By Debra on 10-23-11
By: Kenneth Oppel
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The Bondwoman's Narrative
- By: Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Anna Deavere Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring tale of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.
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Poor reading of an important book
- By Hilary on 11-15-04
By: Hannah Crafts, and others
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The Jewel of Seven Stars
- By: Bram Stoker
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The warning was inscribed on the entrance of the hidden tomb, forgotten for millennia in the sands of mystic Egypt. Then the archaeologists and grave robbers came in search of the fabled Jewel of Seven Stars, which they found clutched in the hand of the mummy. Few heeded the ancient warning, until all who came in contact with the Jewel began to die in a mysterious and violent way, with the marks of a strangler around their neck.
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Mother of all Mummy-Stories
- By Dorothea on 03-15-08
By: Bram Stoker
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The Adolescent
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 28 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The narrator and protagonist of Dostoevsky's novel The Adolescent (first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a naive 19-year-old boy bursting with ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his father's wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St. Petersburg to confront the father he barely knows, inspired by an inchoate dream of communion and armed with a mysterious document that he believes gives him power over others.
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An Oft-Forgotten Dostoevsky Gem
- By Ben on 02-09-20
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, and others
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The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Jonathan Kent
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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This dark story, set in medieval Austria, hinges on unearthly and hidden mental powers. It also gives an insight to the author's psyche during his final days.
The other stories in this edition include "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg", "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", "The Story of the Bad Little Boy", "The Diary of Adam and Eve", "Edward Mills and George Benton", "The Joke That Made Ed's Fortune", and "A Fable".
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Bad text, humdrum narration
- By Tad Davis on 05-19-08
By: Mark Twain