The Blue Cross
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The Blue Cross
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Narrated by:
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Cathy Dobson
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By:
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G. K. Chesterton
About this listen
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer best known for his fictional priest-detective, Father Brown. In The Blue Cross however, we are following the famous Parisien sleuth Aristide Valentin in pusuit of a master criminal in London.
Valentin's problem is that he has no clue where to start looking... until in a restaurant where he has his breakfast, the salt and sugar are in the wrong containers. And then he learns that two priests had been in the restaurant earlier, and one of them had deliberately thrown his soup at the wall.
On a hunch, Valentin at once sets off in hot pursuit of the two priests, and finds a trail of the oddest clues all across London.
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 150
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 145
In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire listeners to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Practical, literate, generous
- By Gare on 04-13-08
By: Francine Prose
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of the famous author of Albinos in Black, The Back of the Moon, and Doubtful Asphodel. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, the novel concludes “ I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.”
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3 out of 5 stars
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A dry run at big, complex themes
- By Darwin8u on 12-08-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Great God Pan
- Esoteric Classics: Occult Fiction
- By: Arthur Machen
- Narrated by: Shea Taylor
- Length: 2 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 164
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 146
Machen's novella The Great God Pan is often cited as one of Lovecraft's most notable influences. In it, Dr. Raymond's ultimate goal is to devise a way to open the mind of man so that he may experience all the world has to offer. He calls this "seeing the great god Pan". After much study of the human mind, he devises an experiment that involves minor brain surgery. He performs this experiment on a young woman named Mary, but when she awakens she is terrified and mentally crippled.
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5 out of 5 stars
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classic horror
- By Shantee on 05-04-16
By: Arthur Machen
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Despair
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder. One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Russian emigre candy dandy murderers R my weakness
- By Darwin8u on 10-02-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Elements of Eloquence
- Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase
- By: Mark Forsyth
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,734
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,558
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,530
In his inimitably entertaining and wonderfully witty style, he takes apart famous phrases and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or quip like Oscar Wilde. Whether you’re aiming to achieve literary immortality or just hoping to deliver the perfect one-liner, The Elements of Eloquence proves that you don’t need to have anything important to say - you simply need to say it well.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Who knew rhetoric could be so much fun?
- By Philo on 10-30-14
By: Mark Forsyth
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Lord Peter Wimsey: Novels 1-3
- By: Dorothy L. Sayers
- Narrated by: Graham Scott
- Length: 26 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
The first three mysteries for Dorothy L. Sayers' aristocratic sleuth: first, a body is discovered in a Battersea bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez, on the same night that financier Sir Reuben Levy disappears from his Park Lane home. Then, Wimsey returns to England when his brother, the Duke of Denver, is accused of murdering the fiance of their sister, Lady Mary, and a trial in the House of Lords looms; and finally, an overheard conversation in a restaurant begins an investigation of the strangely premature death of wealthy and terminally ill old lady Miss Agatha Dawson.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love Lord Peter
- By Mav's mom on 10-16-24
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Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
- By: M. R. James
- Narrated by: David Timson, Stephen Critchlow
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 165
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 149
The powerful sense of evil – darkness, creepy hairy presences, cloaks, hoods, talons and tentacles – pervades these classic ghost stories by M.R. James. A Cambridge scholar himself, James explored what happens when academics dabble in things they don’t understand and unleash forces of which they know nothing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great performances of the classic
- By Adeliese Baumann on 06-25-11
By: M. R. James
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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Distant Star
- By: Roberto Bolano
- Narrated by: Walter Krochmal
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Omg
- By Sierra on 08-03-16
By: Roberto Bolano
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Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.
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5 out of 5 stars
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big ideas presented simply
- By Ashton on 01-31-14
By: Umberto Eco
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The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
- By: Michael Dibdin
- Narrated by: Robert Glenister
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 80
In the late seventies an extraordinary document came to light which for fifty years had been held on deposit by the bankers of the deceased John Herbert Watson MD - better known to devotees of Conan Doyle as Dr Watson. A continuous narrative in the doctor’s own hand, the story opens in the East End of London in 1888. Three women have been savagely murdered by Jack the Ripper.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Keeps you guessing, even after its finished!
- By Benja on 03-28-13
By: Michael Dibdin
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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
- By: Robert Louis Stevenson
- Narrated by: Michael Kitchen
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 166
This dark psychological fantasy is more than a moral tale. It is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution and criminality, and the secret lives behind Victorian propriety, to create a unique form of urban Gothic.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Dark Human Heart
- By Jefferson on 01-30-11
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The Glamour of Grammar
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Early in the history of English, glamour and grammar were the same word, linked to enchantment and magical spells. Now grammar brings to mind language bullies and bored-out-of-their-skulls students. Roy Peter Clark, one of America’s most influential writing teachers, wants to change that by putting the glamour back into grammar.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Wasteful
- By ABID on 12-05-13
By: Roy Peter Clark
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The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 172
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
These stories display Twain's place in American letters as a master writer in the authentic native idiom. He was exuberant and irreverent, but underlying the humor was a vigorous desire for social justice and a pervasive equalitarian attitude.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great but incomplete
- By Tad Davis on 03-23-10
By: Mark Twain