The Color Purple
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The Color Purple
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Narrated by:
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Alice Walker
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By:
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Alice Walker
About this listen
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this novel about a resilient and courageous woman has become a Broadway show and a cultural phenomenon.
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband.
In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God. The letters, spanning 20 years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women. She meets Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress and a jazz singer with a zest for life, and her stepson’s wife, Sophia, who challenges her to fight for independence. And though the many letters from Celie’s sister are hidden by her husband, Nettie’s unwavering support will prove to be the most breathtaking of all
The Color Purple has sold more than five million copies, inspired an Academy Award-nominated film starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey and directed by Steven Spielberg, and been adapted into a Tony-nominated Broadway musical. Lauded as a literary masterpiece, this is the groundbreaking novel that placed Walker “in the company of Faulkner” (The Nation) and remains a wrenching - yet intensely uplifting - experience for new generations of listeners.
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A Feel-Good Story
- By Chrissie on 07-13-13
By: Olive Ann Burns
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Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
- By: Allan Gurganus
- Narrated by: Barbara McCulloh
- Length: 49 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 62
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dated.
- By edie butler on 04-06-21
By: Allan Gurganus
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Gloria
- By: Kerry Young
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Jamaica, 1938. Gloria Campbell is sixteen years old when a single violent act alters the course of her life forever. Taking along her younger sister, she flees their hometown to forge a new life in Kingston. But in a capital city awash with change, a black woman is still treated as a second-class citizen. From a room in a boarding house and a job at a supply store, Gloria finds her way to a house of ill repute on the edge of the city, intrigued by the glamorous, financially independent women within.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awesome story! And Robin Miles is a star!!
- By atlfolk on 06-23-18
By: Kerry Young
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Ellen Foster
- By: Kaye Gibbons
- Narrated by: Ruth Ann Phimister
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 112
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy." So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kaye Gibbons's first novel, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Wise, funny, affectionate and true, Ellen Foster is, as Walker Percy called it, "The real thing. Which is to say, a lovely, sometimes heart/wrenching novel...."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great!!
- By Jo on 04-06-18
By: Kaye Gibbons
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Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
- By: Rebecca Wells
- Narrated by: Judith Ivey
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,132
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 993
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 986
When Vivi and Siddalee Walker, an unforgettable mother-daughter team, get into a savage fight over a New York Times article that refers to Vivi as a "tap-dancing child abuser", the fallout is felt from Louisiana to New York to Seattle. Siddalee, a successful theater director with a huge hit on her hands, panics and postpones her upcoming wedding to her lover and friend, Connor McGill. Vivi's intrepid gang of lifelong girlfriends, the Ya-Yas, sashay in and conspire to bring everyone back together.
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5 out of 5 stars
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As usual the book is better than the movie
- By Denzil and Judy's Account on 03-25-10
By: Rebecca Wells
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The Homeplace
- Singing River, Book 1
- By: Gilbert Morris
- Narrated by: Judith West
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
As the year 1928 begins, 14-year-old Lanie Belle Freeman of Fairhope, Arkansas, has bright hopes for the future. Her father has launched a new business, and her mother is expecting her fifth baby. Lanie has dreams of going to college and being a writer. Then tragedy strikes.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Slow to start. But hang in there. It’s worth it
- By paula wright on 02-24-19
By: Gilbert Morris
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The Known World
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 931
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 499
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Story4 out of 5 stars 499
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A meandering audiobook...
- By Daniel on 09-03-04
By: Edward P. Jones
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Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 16,493
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15,001
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Story4 out of 5 stars 14,957
An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
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5 out of 5 stars
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To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
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Rush Home Road
- By: Lori Lansens
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 253
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Story4 out of 5 stars 191
When a 70-year-old woman finds a five-year-old girl abandoned on her doorstep, she is thrust into a sorrowful past that can only be conquered with the help of the girl who opened her memory - the very girl she is trying to save. This first novel, according to author Jacquelyn Mitchard, is one of "exquisite power, honesty, and conviction...quite nearly without flaws."
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1 out of 5 stars
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filthy language and violent content
- By Anna on 12-16-11
By: Lori Lansens
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The Sweet By and By
- A Novel
- By: Todd Johnson
- Narrated by: Becky Ann Baker, Adriane Lenox, Robin Miles, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Among the longleaf pines and family farms of eastern North Carolina, days seem to pass without incident for Margaret Clayton and Bernice Stokes until they discover each other in a friendship that will take them on the most important journey of their lives. Margaret, droll and whip smart, has a will of iron that never fails her even when her body does, while Bernice, an avid country-music fan, is rarely lucid.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great 2/3 of a book.
- By Tracy on 07-09-12
By: Todd Johnson
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This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
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The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
- By: Ernest J. Gaines
- Narrated by: Tonya Jordan
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 480
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 401
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 402
This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960s. Miss Jane Pittman has "endured," has seen almost everything and foretold the rest.
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5 out of 5 stars
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At great listen
- By Susan on 11-11-08
By: Ernest J. Gaines
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Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
- By: Susan Gregg Gilmore
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 244
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 220
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Story4 out of 5 stars 214
In the latest novel from Susan Gregg Gilmore, sometimes you have to return to the place where you began to arrive at the place where you belong.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not what I expected but........
- By Coach "J" on 03-11-16
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Angel Sister
- A Novel
- By: Ann H. Gabhart
- Narrated by: Dianna Dorman
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
It is 1936 and Kate Merritt works hard to keep her family together. Her father has slipped into alcoholism, her mother is trying to come to grips with their dire financial situation, and her sisters seem to remain blissfully oblivious to all of it. Kate could never have imagined that a dirty, abandoned little girl named Lorena Birdsong would be just what her family needs.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By DWT on 01-06-25
By: Ann H. Gabhart
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,520
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8,378
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,345
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
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The Ponder Heart
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Sally Darling
- Length: 4 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Originally published in The New Yorker in 1954, The Ponder Heart is easily Eudora Welty’s most comic novel, a lighthearted burlesque that rivals Caldwell’s Tobacco Road for capturing rural idioms, and the novels of Mark Twain for high farce.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great reader
- By Patricia B. on 03-12-17
By: Eudora Welty
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