The Improvised Life of Polycarp Jarvis
Classic Canning, Book 4
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The Improvised Life of Polycarp Jarvis
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Narrated by:
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John Higgins
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By:
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Victor Canning
About this listen
An exuberant, life-affirming novel of taking your chances.
After a spur-of-the-moment day out with his boss’s daughter in celebration of his 21st birthday, Polycarp Jarvis decides to quit his Bristol-based junior government worker job. Newly emboldened, he embarks on an erratic, engaging, and not always strictly legal course through life. Going from bus driver for the Red Dragon Motor Company to co-owner of a flying company, to seller of quack medicines, and eventually to media tycoon, Polycarp makes much of his luck along the way. Through ups and downs, his exuberance and charm carry him through. But, what kind of person will he be by the end?
This gentle coming-of-age story was hugely popular on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today.
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- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
The year is 1928. On the outskirts of a large German city, three young men are earning a thin and precarious living. Fully armed young storm troopers swagger in the streets. Restlessness, poverty, and violence are everywhere. For these three, friendship is the only refuge from the chaos around them. Then the youngest of them falls in love and brings into the group a young woman who will become a comrade as well, as they are all tested in ways they can have never imagined.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love and friendship in a dying world.
- By Tarquin on 03-18-19
By: Erich Maria Remarque, and others
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Mrs. Tim of the Regiment
- By: D. E. Stevenson
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
Vivacious, young Hester Christie tries to run her home like clockwork, as would befit the wife of British Army officer, Tim Christie. However hard Mrs Tim strives for seamless living amidst the other army wives, she is always moving flat-out to remember groceries, rule lively children, side-step village gossip and placate her husband with bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade. Left alone for months at a time whilst her husband is with his regiment, Mrs Tim resolves to keep a diary of events large and small in her family life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Life as a military wife
- By Jerri C on 03-09-13
By: D. E. Stevenson
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Scoop
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 309
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 275
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Story4 out of 5 stars 274
In Scoop, surreptitiously dubbed "a newspaper adventure", Waugh flays Fleet Street and the social pastimes of its war correspondants as he tells how William Boot became the star of British super-journalism and how, leaving part of his shirt in the claws of the lovely Katchen, he returned from Ishmaelia to London as the "Daily's Beast's" more accoladed overseas reporter.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Well Written & Funny but Lacking
- By Michael on 07-19-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
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Dreamers of the Day
- A Novel
- By: Mary Doria Russell
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 188
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4 out of 5 stars 139
A 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as an historic Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - enters into the company of the historic luminaries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Little Big Woman
- By W.Denis on 10-02-08
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The Fair Miss Fortune
- By: D. E. Stevenson
- Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 96
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Story4 out of 5 stars 96
Jane Fortune causes a stir when she arrives in the small community of Dingleford. She has bought an old cottage and plans to open a tearoom. Old friends Charles Weatherby and Harold Prestcott both fall for the newcomer, but her behaviour seems to vary wildly – she encourages first one then the other and at other times barely recognises them. Is there more to the fair Miss Fortune than meets the eye?
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Humorous Look at 1930s English Village Life
- By Pam on 09-13-12
By: D. E. Stevenson
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The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. 2
- A Modern Comedy
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 34 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 17
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story5 out of 5 stars 14
John Galsworthy's magnificent trilogy of power and passion chronicles the wealthy Forsyte family. The complete Chronicles are divided into three volumes, containing nine books and four interludes in total. Volume 2, A Modern Comedy, focuses on Soames's vivacious daughter, Fleur. Soames tries constantly to protect her but is baffled by the carefree attitudes in post-war London. Fleur and her husband Michael Mont host society gatherings, but her previous affair with Jon Forsyte leaves embers of a passion that are ready to ignite - with dreadful consequences.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very worthwhile
- By Jonathan Kalkstein on 09-27-22
By: John Galsworthy
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One of Ours
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Kristen Underwood
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 95
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Story4 out of 5 stars 94
Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Cather's writing is impeccable
- By Kelly on 12-20-19
By: Willa Cather
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Troubles
- By: J. G. Farrell
- Narrated by: Kevin Hely
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 77
Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancée he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely delightful read
- By E. Kim on 02-25-20
By: J. G. Farrell
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Hannay: His 5 Adventures
- By: John Buchan
- Narrated by: Graham Scott
- Length: 49 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story5 out of 5 stars 16
In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay struggles to thwart an assassination plot designed to hasten war between Britain and Germany. Later he is plucked from the trenches first, in Greenmantle, to frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world; and then, in Mr. Standfast, to undertake a vital secret mission against a German spy ring operating among pacifist elements in England. After the war, his adventures continue in The Three Hostages; and then in The Island of Sheep, when an old oath to protect the son of a friend from his days in Africa draws him into new danger.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Values of a bygone era
- By Barbara on 03-16-24
By: John Buchan
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Cold Comfort Farm
- Penguin Classics
- By: Stella Gibbons
- Narrated by: Pearl Mackie
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 383
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 330
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 330
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at 19, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last 20 years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very, very amusing, a go to if one needs cheering
- By Laura G. Marcantoni on 11-05-20
By: Stella Gibbons
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The Narrow Corner
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
On his way home from a remote Pacific island, Dr Saunders travels with two strangers: the treacherous Captain Nichols, and Fred, a handsome Australian with a shadowy past. Driven to shelter from a storm on the island of Banda, the trio meets good-natured Erik Christessen and his fiancée, the cool and beautiful Louise. A tense, exotic tale of love, jealousy, murder and suicide, which evolved from a passage in Maugham's earlier masterpiece, The Moon and Sixpence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stunningly Great
- By SouthwestDude on 09-08-19
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A Clergyman's Daughter
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard Brown
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4 out of 5 stars 140
Dorothy Hare, the dutiful daughter of a rector in Suffolk, spends her days performing good works and cultivating good thoughts, pricking her arm with a pin when a bad thought arises. She does her best to reconcile her father’s fanciful view of his position in the world with such realities as the butcher’s bill. But even Dorothy’s strength has its limits, and one night, as she works feverishly on costumes for the church-school play, she blacks out. When she comes to, she finds herself on a London street, clad in a sleazy dress and unaware of her identity.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Bottom-Shelf Orwell, but still G-D Orwell
- By Darwin8u on 08-11-19
By: George Orwell
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The Great Gatsby
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Set against a backdrop of jazz music, bootlegging, and lavish parties, The Great Gatsby is the story of Midwesterner Nick Carraway’s curious introduction to the decadent world of his mysterious, wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby, whose thirst for riches is matched only by his tragic obsession with the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. This dangerously propulsive tale of glitz and glamour continues to be relevant as listeners long for escapist novels—a chance to flee into Gatsby’s famed mansion and lose oneself in the rush of opulence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Alive and Wild! I finished it same day.
- By Brea DeMarquee on 08-27-21
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Freddy and Fredericka
- By: Mark Helprin
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 25 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 505
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 208
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Story4 out of 5 stars 214
Best-selling, critically acclaimed author Mark Helprin's work has drawn favorable comparisons to an elite group of literary legends, including James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Mann. Helprin's sheer comic brilliance shines in this ingenious farce.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Can't rate it high enough (and I'm a tough grader)
- By Annette on 09-06-05
By: Mark Helprin
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The Keys to the Street
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4 out of 5 stars 79
Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mystery with humor and insight
- By Ida Hagman on 10-02-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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The P.G. Wodehouse Collection
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 946
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 838
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 837
This title includes not only the entire audiobook of Right Ho, Jeeves, but also all of the P.G. Wodehouse titles in the current Classic Tales library. It also includes a Jeeves short story only available in the collection: "Extricating Young Gussie". The complete running time is over 15 hours. All titles have been remastered, and have never sounded better!
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1 out of 5 stars
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Don't buy this version of the wonderful Wodehouse stories
- By K Bell on 11-05-16
By: P. G. Wodehouse