The Good Soldier
Penguin Classics
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The Good Soldier
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Narrated by:
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David Shaw-Parker
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Billy Howle
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By:
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Ford Madox Ford
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
This Penguin Classic is performed by Billy Howle, known for his roles in Dunkirk, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and On Chesil Beach. This definitive recording includes an introduction by David Bradshaw.
The Dowells, a wealthy American couple, have been close friends with the Ashburnhams for years. Edward Ashburnham, a first-rate soldier, seems to be the perfect English gentleman, and Leonora his perfect wife, but beneath the surface their marriage seethes with unhappiness and deception. Our only window on the strange tangle of events surrounding Edward is provided by John Dowell, the husband he deceives. Gradually Dowell unfolds a devastating story, in which everyone's honesty is in doubt. This extraordinary novel of passion and betrayal is a masterpiece of narrative skill and emotional depth.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,090
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 966
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Story4 out of 5 stars 959
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 Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
- By: Carson McCullers
- Narrated by: Cherry Jones
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,018
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,437
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,439
Carson McCullers was all of 23 when she published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. She became an overnight literary sensation, and soon such authors as Tennessee Williams were calling her "the greatest prose writer that the South [has] produced." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter tells an unforgettable tale of moral isolation in a small southern mill town in the 1930s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Do yourself a favor
- By Barbara on 06-08-05
By: Carson McCullers
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- By: Muriel Spark
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 377
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 291
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Story4 out of 5 stars 289
In the classic work that launched a play, a movie, and a song, Muriel Spark tells the darkly intriguing story of an eccentric Edinburgh teacher and the intense relationship she develops with six of her students. The scandalously outspoken Miss Brodie makes big waves in the conservative Scottish school, preaching the value of art, passion, and daring.
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5 out of 5 stars
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creme de la creme
- By Kathleen on 01-04-08
By: Muriel Spark
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The Bonfire of the Vanities
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 27 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,023
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,161
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,151
Tom Wolfe's best-selling modern classic tells the story of Sherman McCoy, an elite Wall Street bond trader who has it all: wealth, power, prestige, a Park Avenue apartment, a beautiful wife, and an even more beautiful mistress - until one wrong turn sends Sherman spiraling downward into a humiliating fall from grace. A car accident in the Bronx involving Sherman, his girlfriend, and two young lower-class Black men sets a match to the incendiary racial and social tensions of 1980s New York City.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Big mistake
- By karen on 08-31-14
By: Tom Wolfe
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Notes from Underground
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Narrated by: Peter Batchelor
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original. This audio edition of Notes from Underground is the only recording of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation of Dostoevsky’s classic work.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Bad Performance
- By Evan Baas on 10-08-21
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
- By: Flannery O'Connor
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
The collection that established O’Connor’s reputation as one of the American masters of the short story. The volume contains the celebrated title story, a tale of the murderous fugitive "The Misfit", as well as “The Displaced Person” and eight other stories.
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5 out of 5 stars
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It contains the following stories:
- By Erica Smith on 11-09-23
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The Sun Also Rises
- By: Ernest Hemingway, Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: William Hurt
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 6,113
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,210
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Story4 out of 5 stars 5,203
A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, The Sun Also Rises introduces two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. In his first great literary masterpiece, Hemingway portrays an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Great actor, terrible reader, kills classic
- By Kerry on 09-14-14
By: Ernest Hemingway, and others
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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 1,127
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 973
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Story4 out of 5 stars 962
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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American Psycho
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5,372
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,760
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Story4 out of 5 stars 4,768
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fanntastic book but maybe not for everyone....
- By So Fain on 03-27-11
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The Master and Margarita
- By: Mikhail Bulgakov
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,192
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,717
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,714
The Devil comes to Moscow, but he isn't all bad; Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don't burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world's great novels.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Satisfying Satanic Satire
- By Jacob on 12-06-11
By: Mikhail Bulgakov
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The Haunting of Hill House
- By: Shirley Jackson
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 11,013
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 9,778
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Story4 out of 5 stars 9,782
Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Well written horror tale
- By C K White on 02-11-14
By: Shirley Jackson
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The Grapes of Wrath
- By: John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 21 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 14,140
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 12,618
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 12,579
Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic The Grapes of Wrath remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of Tom Joad and his family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires, and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wish I could give it 10 stars!
- By P. Minor on 07-18-14
By: John Steinbeck, and others
Wonderful Intro Read at the End
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Humorous Take on Conceptually Tragic Circumstance
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Worst book in recent memory
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