The Poison Principle
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The Poison Principle
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Narrated by:
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Helen Garner
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Wendy Bos
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By:
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Gail Bell
About this listen
A fascinating detective story and moving memoir of death and deceit. When Dr William Macbeth poisoned two of his sons in 1927, his wife and sister hid the murders in the intensely private realm of family secrets. Like the famous poisoner Dr Crippen, Macbeth behaved as if he were immune to consequences; unlike Crippen, he avoided detection and punishment...or did he? As time passed, the story of Dr William Macbeth, well-dressed poisoner, haunted and divided his descendants. Macbeth's granddaughter Gail Bell, who grew up with the story, spent 10 years reading the literature of poisoning in order to understand Macbeth's life. A chemist herself, she listened for echoes in the great cases of the 19th and 20th centuries, in myths, fiction and poison lore. This intricate story, with a moving twist at the end, is a book about family guilt and secrets, and also an exploration of the nature of death itself as Bell turns to her grandfather's poisonous predecessors, from Cleopatra, Madame Bovary and Napoleon to prolific serial killer, Harold Shipman.
©2016 Gail Bell (P)2017 Bolinda Publishing Pty LtdListeners also enjoyed...
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- Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
- By: Deborah Blum
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,562
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,940
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,929
In The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating book marred by production errors
- By Reagan Kelly on 03-02-10
By: Deborah Blum
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The Possessed
- Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
- By: Elif Batuman
- Narrated by: Elif Batuman
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
In The Possessed we watch Elif Batuman investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has 100 different words for crying; and see an 18th-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their places in The Possessed.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dear Russian Literary Diary...
- By Darwin8u on 08-29-17
By: Elif Batuman
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The Moor's Last Sigh
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love. Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile.
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3 out of 5 stars
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The performance is enchanting.
- By Kelly on 05-04-18
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Trip to Echo Spring
- On Writers and Drinking
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Narration!!!!!! Great story about 20 Century make writer who suffer with alcoholism. If you like this topic and want more
- By Pamela Abbey on 04-25-21
By: Olivia Laing
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Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,004
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,592
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,577
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding book, superb narration
- By MarcS on 06-09-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Art of the English Murder
- From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock
- By: Lucy Worsley
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 191
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 190
In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early 19th century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Should Come With a Spoiler Alert
- By Jessica on 04-15-16
By: Lucy Worsley
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Ungovernable
- The Victorian Parent's Guide to Raising Flawless Children
- By: Therese Oneill
- Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg, Betsy Foldes Meiman
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 188
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4 out of 5 stars 166
Feminist historian Therese Oneill is back, to educate you on what to expect when you're expecting...a Victorian baby! In Ungovernable, Oneill conducts an unforgettable tour through the backward, pseudoscientific, downright bizarre parenting fashions of the Victorians.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Unexpected and Hilarious
- By M. Huber on 05-21-19
By: Therese Oneill
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Ripper
- The Secret Life of Walter Sickert
- By: Patricia Cornwell
- Narrated by: Mary Stuart Masterson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 861
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 746
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Story4 out of 5 stars 743
Vain and charismatic Walter Sickert made a name for himself as a painter in Victorian London. But the ghoulish nature of his art - as well as extensive evidence - points to another name, one that's left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material - including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause - and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.
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1 out of 5 stars
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I thought this was a new book.
- By Stephanie on 03-01-17
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Lady Killers
- Deadly Women Throughout History
- By: Tori Telfer
- Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
When you think of serial killers throughout history, the names that come to mind are ones like Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. But what about Tillie Klimek, Moulay Hassan, Kate Bender? The narrative we’re comfortable with is the one where women are the victims of violent crime, not the perpetrators. In fact, serial killers are thought to be so universally, overwhelmingly male that in 1998, FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood infamously declared in a homicide conference, “There are no female serial killers.”
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2 out of 5 stars
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An ode to arsenic
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 03-04-24
By: Tori Telfer
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Wicked Autumn
- Booktrack Edition
- By: G. M. Malliet
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 20
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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Story4 out of 5 stars 17
Max Tudor has adapted well to his post as vicar of St. Edwold's in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip. The quiet village seems the perfect home for Max, who has fled a harrowing past as an MI5 agent. But this new-found serenity is quickly shattered when the highly vocal and unpopular president of the Women's Institute turns up dead at the Harvest Fayre. The death looks like an accident, but Max's training as a former agent kicks in, and before long he suspects foul play.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Just OK
- By Jeanne on 08-05-21
By: G. M. Malliet
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Unnatural Causes
- By: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Narrated by: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 525
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 466
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 461
As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?
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2 out of 5 stars
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Boring!
- By Zoesmydog on 06-21-19
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
- By: Anne Fadiman
- Narrated by: Pamela Xiong
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,086
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,775
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,772
When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good audiobook but narrator struggles with basic pronunciation
- By Kate on 06-04-15
By: Anne Fadiman
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Get Well Soon
- History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,747
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8,036
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,003
In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon 34 more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-19th-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome - a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Didn't know syphilis could be so fascinating.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-09-17
By: Jennifer Wright
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The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
- By: Fay Weldon
- Narrated by: Gemma Dawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
In New York Magazine, Rhoda Koenig calls The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, "...a novel of blazingly hot revenge, one that amply illustrates the saying about heaven having no rage like love turned to hate, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sweet, brutal, and over the top revenge!!
- By Wayne on 04-10-17
By: Fay Weldon
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Nine Continents
- A Memoir In and Out of China
- By: Xiaolu Guo
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home.
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5 out of 5 stars
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must read
- By Jeff Darlington on 10-22-17
By: Xiaolu Guo
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The Collector of Dying Breaths
- A Novel of Suspense (Reincarnationist, Book 6)
- By: M. J. Rose
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross, Phil Gigante
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
From the internationally best-selling author, a lush and imaginative novel that crisscrosses time as passion and obsessions collide. An orphan named René le Florentin is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. Traveling with the young duchessina from Italy to France, René brings with him a cache of secret documents from the monastery where he was trained: recipes for exotic fragrances and potent medicines - and a formula for an alchemic process said to have the potential to reanimate the dead.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Count Dracula
- By Melanie on 08-18-14
By: M. J. Rose