Prelude to Bruise
Poetry
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Prelude to Bruise
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Narrated by:
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Saeed Jones
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By:
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Saeed Jones
About this listen
Prelude to Bruise is a song from a tightrope, balancing ecstatic existence and the chaos that always threatens to engulf a life on the margins. How do we reckon our past without being ravaged by it? How do we use people, their bodies, to express ourselves? Danger is everywhere in these poems, but never overwhelms them; the poet is always an anchor on the other side. And his story carries us relentlessly along.
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 638
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 570
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 568
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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The Ploughmen
- A Novel
- By: Kim Zupan
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,305
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,189
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,176
At the center of this searing fever-dream of a novel are two men - a killer awaiting trial and a troubled young deputy - sitting across fromeach other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: JohnGload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration; and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perceptive Narration
- By Abby Elvidge on 09-22-16
By: Kim Zupan
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The Boat Runner
- A Novel
- By: Devin Murphy
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
Beginning in the summer of 1939, 14-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and the locals hold the family in high esteem. On days when they aren't playing with friends, Jacob and Edwin help their uncle Martin on his fishing boat in the North Sea, where German ships have become a common sight. When war breaks out, Jacob's world is thrown into chaos.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not a typical World War II story
- By Marsha L. Woerner on 01-31-18
By: Devin Murphy
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Palimpsest
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Aasne Vigesaa
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 165
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 137
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Story4 out of 5 stars 134
Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse - a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Prose, but lacks maturity
- By Michael on 08-09-15
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Song of the Exile
- By: Kiana Davenport
- Narrated by: Cristine McMurdo-Wallis
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
This beautiful and haunting novel bares the soul of a Hawaiian-American family during World War II. As you share in the Meahuna family's misfortunes and triumphs, a sense of intense intimacy evolves. Cristine McMurdo-Wallis lets you savor the family members' remarkable, heartwrenching stories as they are revealed piece by piece in language rich with sensuous detail.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stunning Historical Novel
- By Mimi Routh on 05-27-19
By: Kiana Davenport
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Leopard at the Door
- By: Jennifer McVeigh
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 441
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 388
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 385
After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she'd longed for is much changed. Her father's new companion - a strange, intolerant woman - has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites.
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5 out of 5 stars
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IMPERIALISM
- By Haberwoman on 08-02-18
By: Jennifer McVeigh
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Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,100
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 950
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Story4 out of 5 stars 939
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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4 out of 5 stars
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
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Battleborn
- By: Claire Vaye Watkins
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Morgan Hallett, Laura Knight Keating, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful magnificent stories beautifully told
- By Pedro Ramirez on 12-03-15
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The Fireman
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,326
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,696
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Story4 out of 5 stars 7,675
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
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3 out of 5 stars
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GOD'S WAITING ROOM; AKA FLORIDA
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-25-17
By: Joe Hill
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Other Voices, Other Rooms
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Cody Roberts
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 147
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Story4 out of 5 stars 130
At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Capote’s coming of age story
- By Daniel Diffin on 11-08-23
By: Truman Capote
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NOS4A2
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17,588
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16,139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16,114
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gripping performance by Kate Mulgrew....
- By Leslie on 05-06-13
By: Joe Hill
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Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 375
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 325
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Story4 out of 5 stars 323
Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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The Reapers Are the Angels
- By: Alden Bell
- Narrated by: Tai Sammons
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 404
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 345
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Story4 out of 5 stars 346
For 25 years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her heart. She can’t remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her off on her personal journey toward redemption.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Literary Limbo-ing
- By Mel on 04-25-13
By: Alden Bell
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A Beautiful Place to Die
- By: Malla Nunn
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 795
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 637
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Story4 out of 5 stars 637
Unfolding in 1952 South Africa, A Beautiful Place to Die is a riveting international mystery that flows from the pen of author Malla Nunn. Police officer Emmanuel Cooper is dispatched to a remote town after a police captain is found murdered in a creek. Even though Cooper judges the crime open and shut, the government's feared Special Branch is summoned, making for an intrigue that will titillate any mystery fan.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Police Procedural & The Pain Of Apartheid
- By Sara on 09-30-15
By: Malla Nunn
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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 196
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 195
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others