The Mercy Papers
A Memoir of Three Weeks
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The Mercy Papers
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Narrated by:
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Ann Marie Lee
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By:
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Robin Romm
About this listen
In her searing memoir The Mercy Papers, Romm uses this magic to expand the weeks before her mother's death into a story about a daughter in the moments before and after loss.
With a striking mix of humor and honesty, Romm ushers us into a world where an obstinate hospice nurse tries to heal through pamphlets and a yelping grandfather squirrels away money in a shoe-shine kit. Untrained dogs scamper about as strangers and friends rally around death, offering sympathy as they clamor for attention. The pillbox turns quickly into a metaphor for order; questions about medication turn to musings about God. The mundane and spiritual melt together as Romm reveals the sharp truths that lurk around every corner and captures, with great passion, the awe, fear, and fury of a daughter losing her mother.
The Mercy Papers was started in the midst of heartbreak, and not originally intended for an audience. The result is a raw, unsentimental book that reverberates with humanity. Robin Romm has created a tribute to family and an indelible portrait that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost.
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- By: Haven Kimmel
- Narrated by: Haven Kimmel
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 186
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 187
When we last saw Zippy, she was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in her home. Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road. Her dad was off somewhere, gambling or "working." And Zippy was lost in her own fabulous world of exploring the fringes of Moorland, Indiana.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great fun !!
- By Kim on 04-20-11
By: Haven Kimmel
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The Good Goodbye
- By: Carla Buckley
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Suzy Jackson, Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,310
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,093
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,087
Two cousins, Rory and Arden, lie unconscious in a hospital burn unit. The fire, which broke out in their shared college dorm room, killed another student, and the police want answers. Tension between Rory and Arden's parents was already at an all-time high before the fire, owing to a recent financial crisis and the decline of the family business. As the parents huddle anxiously in the waiting room, carefully avoiding the subject of their own unraveling relationships, disturbing truths come to light.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I could not stop listening.
- By Amy Davis on 05-29-16
By: Carla Buckley
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The Lost Girls
- A Novel
- By: Heather Young
- Narrated by: Alice Rosengard, Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 718
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 653
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Story4 out of 5 stars 651
In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging story spanning three generations.
- By LilMissMolly on 09-23-16
By: Heather Young
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Like Family
- Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir
- By: Paula McLain
- Narrated by: Wendy Tremont King
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A famous writer describes her life growing up in foster care
- By Nancy C. on 12-21-18
By: Paula McLain
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Marrow
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Audra Pagano
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 549
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 490
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 489
Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.
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4 out of 5 stars
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HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 359
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 216
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Story4 out of 5 stars 217
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 786
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 683
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Story4 out of 5 stars 680
A smart, comic pause-resister about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer from the author of Watch Me Disappear and Pretty Things. When Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she’s been waiting years for - until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Perfect Life Ain't So Perfect
- By Theresa on 12-28-08
By: Janelle Brown
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The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 196
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 175
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 176
An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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The End of Eve
- A Memoir
- By: Ariel Gore
- Narrated by: Ariel Gore
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
At age 39, Ariel Gore has everything she’s always wanted: a successful writing career, a long-term partnership, a beautiful if tiny home, a daughter in college and a son in preschool. But life’s happy endings don’t always last. If it’s not one thing, after all, it’s your mother. Her name is Eve. Her epic temper tantrums have already gotten her banned from three cab companies in Portland. And she’s here to announce that she’s dying.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Get Ready for a Bumpy Ride
- By Susie on 03-06-14
By: Ariel Gore
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,094
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,822
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,838
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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The Singing Bone
- By: Beth Hahn
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 73
Alice and her three closest friends meet the enigmatic Jack Wyck. Enticed by his philosophy and the promise of a constant party, Alice and her friends join Mr. Wyck's small group of devoted followers. Their idyll takes an increasingly sinister turn. Mr. Wyck's grand scheme goes wrong, culminating in a night of horrific murders.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Mixed feelings - you may love it - or not!
- By C. Vincent on 04-19-16
By: Beth Hahn
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How to Be an American Housewife
- A Novel
- By: Margaret Dilloway
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington, Emily Durante
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 238
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4 out of 5 stars 197
How to Be an American Housewife is a novel about mothers and daughters and the pull of tradition. It tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and her grown daughter, Sue, a divorced mother whose life as an American housewife hasn't been what she'd expected. When illness prevents Shoko from traveling to Japan, she asks Sue to go in her place. The trip reveals family secrets that change their lives in dramatic and unforeseen ways.
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2 out of 5 stars
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big disappointment
- By Kirsten on 04-12-12
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 513
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 364
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Story4 out of 5 stars 362
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 999
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 742
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 738
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Story4 out of 5 stars 161
Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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5 out of 5 stars
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others