The Rat Catcher
A Love Story
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $19.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Alan Devally
-
By:
-
Kim Kelly
About this listen
The Rat Catcher: A Love Story is a mischievous, fast-paced fable told with an irrepressible love for life, in all its marvellous forms, from bestselling author, Kim Kelly.
In the sweltering summer of 1900, young wharf labourer Patrick O’Reilly is down on his luck in the slums of Sydney and homesick for Tralee. When a deadly outbreak of plague descends on the city, O’Reilly’s daydreaming mind is miles away—in the golden hair and kindly, confident air of a girl called Rosie Hughes.
Just as he’s wondering why any girl would want a no-hoper like him, opportunity knocks with the offer of a job as a rat catcher working for the city’s Plague Department, containing the spread of disease. But the job will bring him a lot more than a pay rise and a swift education on traps and poisons.
In the Public Lending Library, on the top floor of the Queen Victoria Building, above the bustling centre of Sydney, he comes face-to-face with a legendary rat called Old Scratch who will change the way he understands himself and the world forever.
©2022 Kim Kelly (P)2022 Bolinda PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Cloud Cuckoo Land
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
-
-
Academic Snobbery
- By TVR on 10-03-21
By: Anthony Doerr
-
The Outside Boy
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Alan Devally
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ireland, 1959: Young Christopher Hurley is a tinker, a Pavee gypsy, who roams with his father and extended family from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons. Christy carries with him a burden of guilt as well, haunted by the story of his mother’s death in childbirth. The wandering life is the only one Christy has ever known, but when his grandfather dies, everything changes. His father decides to settle briefly, in a town, where Christy and his cousin can receive proper schooling and prepare for their first communions.
-
-
Pure Torture
- By Nena on 01-27-21
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- A Novel
- By: Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb.... As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is.
-
-
MUCH better than I ever expected! Give it a try!
- By Kent on 10-19-09
By: Mary Ann Shaffer, and others
-
The White Apron
- By: Christine Eyres
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born on a farm outside Edinburgh in the mid-19th century, Agnes Watt is embraced by family, community, and tradition. Her youthful hopes and dreams are quashed but she falls in love and marries William Miller, a Gordon Highlander. Life spirals into dark places as the couple become ensnared in the nightmare that descended on the Scottish working class during the industrial revolution. The triumphs of the great Victorian era came at an appalling human cost and Agnes fights against disease and grinding poverty.
-
-
Felt true. Unforgettable main character.
- By Debbie on 01-21-20
By: Christine Eyres
-
Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- By: Jennifer Worth
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.
-
-
The best book I've listened to this year
- By Richard on 06-12-13
By: Jennifer Worth
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Cloud Cuckoo Land
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
-
-
Academic Snobbery
- By TVR on 10-03-21
By: Anthony Doerr
-
The Outside Boy
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Alan Devally
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ireland, 1959: Young Christopher Hurley is a tinker, a Pavee gypsy, who roams with his father and extended family from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons. Christy carries with him a burden of guilt as well, haunted by the story of his mother’s death in childbirth. The wandering life is the only one Christy has ever known, but when his grandfather dies, everything changes. His father decides to settle briefly, in a town, where Christy and his cousin can receive proper schooling and prepare for their first communions.
-
-
Pure Torture
- By Nena on 01-27-21
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- A Novel
- By: Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb.... As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is.
-
-
MUCH better than I ever expected! Give it a try!
- By Kent on 10-19-09
By: Mary Ann Shaffer, and others
-
The White Apron
- By: Christine Eyres
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born on a farm outside Edinburgh in the mid-19th century, Agnes Watt is embraced by family, community, and tradition. Her youthful hopes and dreams are quashed but she falls in love and marries William Miller, a Gordon Highlander. Life spirals into dark places as the couple become ensnared in the nightmare that descended on the Scottish working class during the industrial revolution. The triumphs of the great Victorian era came at an appalling human cost and Agnes fights against disease and grinding poverty.
-
-
Felt true. Unforgettable main character.
- By Debbie on 01-21-20
By: Christine Eyres
-
Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- By: Jennifer Worth
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.
-
-
The best book I've listened to this year
- By Richard on 06-12-13
By: Jennifer Worth
-
Life After Life
- A Novel
- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.
-
-
Strange & Fascinating
- By Sara on 11-02-15
By: Kate Atkinson
-
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
- A Flavia de Luce Mystery
- By: Alan Bradley
- Narrated by: Jayne Entwistle
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950 - and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.
-
-
Opposing Viewpoint
- By Beyond Seventy on 02-20-10
By: Alan Bradley
-
Babel
- Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
- By: R. F. Kuang
- Narrated by: Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 21 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
-
-
The novel language lovers have been waiting for
- By LisaLee on 09-06-22
By: R. F. Kuang
-
Murphy's Law
- By: Rhys Bowen
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Molly Murphy always knew she'd end up in trouble, just as her mother predicted. So, when she commits murder in self-defense, she flees her cherished Ireland, under cover of a false identity, for the anonymous shores of late 19th-century America. When she arrives in New York and sees the welcoming promise of freedom in the Statue of Liberty, Molly begins to breathe easier. But when a man is murdered on Ellis Island, a man Molly was seen arguing with, she becomes a prime suspect in the crime.
-
-
Cream Puff Read
- By Jan on 12-19-13
By: Rhys Bowen
-
Some Danger Involved
- Barker & Llewelyn Series, Book 1
- By: Will Thomas
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London, Some Danger Involved introduces detective Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar in London's Jewish ghetto. When the eccentric and enigmatic Barker takes the case, he must hire an assistant, and out of all who answer an ad for a position with "some danger involved", he chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man with a murky past.
-
-
Clever writing!
- By Kathi on 01-13-17
By: Will Thomas
-
White Teeth
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them.
-
-
4.68 stars....a modern classic
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 06-06-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
A Fine Balance
- By: Rohinton Mistry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
-
-
Read this book if your heart is made of steal
- By Amazon Shopper on 03-23-08
By: Rohinton Mistry
-
Dodger
- A Printz Honor Winner
- By: Terry Pratchett
- Narrated by: Stephen Briggs
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors. Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not, because he's...Dodger. Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London's sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He's not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl - not even if her fate impacts the most powerful people in England.
-
-
Finally Revealed: Where Dickens Got His Ideas!
- By Snoodely on 01-19-13
By: Terry Pratchett
-
Twopence to Cross the Mersey
- By: Helen Forrester
- Narrated by: Liane-Rose Bunce
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This major best-selling memoir of a poverty-stricken childhood in Liverpool is one of the most harrowing but uplifting books you will ever hear. When Helen Forrester's father went bankrupt in 1930, she and her six siblings were forced into utmost poverty and slum surroundings in Depression-ridden Liverpool. The running of the household and the care of the younger children all fell on 12-year-old Helen. Writing about her experiences later in life, Helen Forrester shed light on an almost forgotten part of life in Britain.
-
-
Resilient little girl!
- By Leah on 12-05-16
By: Helen Forrester
-
The Tea Rose
- By: Jennifer Donnelly
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 28 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.
-
-
Wow. Wow wow wow!
- By I like to shop on 04-26-16
-
The Glassblower
- The Glassblower Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Petra Durst-Benning, Samuel Willcocks - translator
- Narrated by: Kristin Watson Heintz
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the village of Lauscha in Germany, things have been done the same way for centuries. The men blow the glass, and the women decorate and pack it. But when Joost Steinmann passes away unexpectedly one September night, his three daughters must learn to fend for themselves. While feisty Johanna takes a practical approach to looking for work, Ruth follows her heart, aiming to catch the eye of a handsome young villager.
-
-
If you love romance novels...
- By Adrian on 12-26-14
By: Petra Durst-Benning, and others
-
The Colour of Magic
- Discworld, Book 1
- By: Terry Pratchett
- Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.
-
-
TERRIBLE Narration!
- By Kayla I on 07-08-22
By: Terry Pratchett
Related to this topic
-
The Colour of Magic
- Discworld, Book 1
- By: Terry Pratchett
- Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.
-
-
TERRIBLE Narration!
- By Kayla I on 07-08-22
By: Terry Pratchett
-
Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- By: Jennifer Worth
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.
-
-
The best book I've listened to this year
- By Richard on 06-12-13
By: Jennifer Worth
-
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard E. Grant
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life.
-
-
Gordon's Grey World is Colored with Grant
- By Timothy on 09-25-11
By: George Orwell
-
A Clergyman's Daughter
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard Brown
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bottom-Shelf Orwell, but still G-D Orwell
- By Darwin8u on 08-11-19
By: George Orwell
-
The Town House
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Juliet Prague, Martyn Read
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me… the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father…” So began the story of Martin Reed - a serf whose resentment of the automatic rule of his feudal lord finally flared into open defiance.
-
-
Another winner by Norah Lofts
- By Bird Lady 147 on 10-03-17
By: Norah Lofts
-
Closer to Home
- Valdemar: The Herald Spy, Book 1
- By: Mercedes Lackey
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mags was once an enslaved orphan living a harsh life in the mines, until the King's Own Herald discovered his talent and trained him as a spy. Now a Herald in his own right, at the newly established Heralds' Collegium, Mags has found a supportive family, including his Companion Dallen.Although normally a Herald in his first year of Whites would be sent off on circuit, Mags is needed close to home for his abilities as a spy and his powerful Mindspeech gift.
-
-
Great story !!
- By T on 10-19-14
By: Mercedes Lackey
-
The Colour of Magic
- Discworld, Book 1
- By: Terry Pratchett
- Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.
-
-
TERRIBLE Narration!
- By Kayla I on 07-08-22
By: Terry Pratchett
-
Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- By: Jennifer Worth
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.
-
-
The best book I've listened to this year
- By Richard on 06-12-13
By: Jennifer Worth
-
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard E. Grant
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life.
-
-
Gordon's Grey World is Colored with Grant
- By Timothy on 09-25-11
By: George Orwell
-
A Clergyman's Daughter
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard Brown
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bottom-Shelf Orwell, but still G-D Orwell
- By Darwin8u on 08-11-19
By: George Orwell
-
The Town House
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Juliet Prague, Martyn Read
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me… the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father…” So began the story of Martin Reed - a serf whose resentment of the automatic rule of his feudal lord finally flared into open defiance.
-
-
Another winner by Norah Lofts
- By Bird Lady 147 on 10-03-17
By: Norah Lofts
-
Closer to Home
- Valdemar: The Herald Spy, Book 1
- By: Mercedes Lackey
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mags was once an enslaved orphan living a harsh life in the mines, until the King's Own Herald discovered his talent and trained him as a spy. Now a Herald in his own right, at the newly established Heralds' Collegium, Mags has found a supportive family, including his Companion Dallen.Although normally a Herald in his first year of Whites would be sent off on circuit, Mags is needed close to home for his abilities as a spy and his powerful Mindspeech gift.
-
-
Great story !!
- By T on 10-19-14
By: Mercedes Lackey
-
Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Shannon McManus, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
-
-
MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
-
Midnight Blue
- By: Simone van der Vlugt
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amsterdam 1654: a dangerous secret threatens to destroy a young widow's new life. Following the sudden death of her husband, 25-year-old Catrin leaves her small village and takes a job as housekeeper to the successful Van Nulandt merchant family. Amsterdam is a city at the peak of its powers: science and art are flourishing, and Dutch ships bring back exotic riches from the Far East. When a figure from her past threatens her new life, Catrin flees to Delft. There, her painting talent earns her a chance as a pottery painter.
-
-
Hard to Be a Woman in 17th Century Holland
- By Cariola on 06-16-17
-
The Fire Rose
- By: Mercedes Lackey
- Narrated by: Kate Black-Regan
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Accepting employment as a governess after hard times hit her family, medieval scholar Rosalind Hawkins is surprised when she learns that her mysterious employer has no children and only wants her to read to him through a speaking tube.
-
-
Great story, poorly presented
- By Che on 02-26-10
By: Mercedes Lackey
-
Murphy's Law
- By: Rhys Bowen
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Molly Murphy always knew she'd end up in trouble, just as her mother predicted. So, when she commits murder in self-defense, she flees her cherished Ireland, under cover of a false identity, for the anonymous shores of late 19th-century America. When she arrives in New York and sees the welcoming promise of freedom in the Statue of Liberty, Molly begins to breathe easier. But when a man is murdered on Ellis Island, a man Molly was seen arguing with, she becomes a prime suspect in the crime.
-
-
Cream Puff Read
- By Jan on 12-19-13
By: Rhys Bowen
-
Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
-
-
Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
-
Journey to the End of the Night
- By: Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.
-
-
Miserable Ride with Cynic Supreme
- By W Perry Hall on 03-15-17
-
The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination
- Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius
- By: John Joseph Adams - editor
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Mary Robinette Kowal, Justine Eyre
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.
-
-
HAND DANCING
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-30-15
-
Lights Out Liverpool
- By: Maureen Lee
- Narrated by: Maggie Ollerenshaw
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Britain stands alone against a monstrous enemy, the inhabitants of Pearl Street face hardship and heartbreak with courage and humour. The war touches each of them in a different way: for Annie Poulson, a widow, it means never-ending worry when her twin boys are called up and sent to France; Sheila Reilly's husband, Cal, faces the terror of U-Boat attacks; Eileen Costello is liberated from a bitter, loveless marriage when her husband is sent to Egypt.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Tansy Adderley on 10-03-18
By: Maureen Lee
-
A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Dreamers of the Day
- A Novel
- By: Mary Doria Russell
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Little Big Woman
- By W.Denis on 10-02-08
-
South Riding
- By: Winifred Holtby
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred's own mother).
-
-
Worth Revisiting
- By Ilana on 11-04-12
By: Winifred Holtby
-
The Agency 1: A Spy in the House
- By: Y. S. Lee
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Victorian England, orphan Mary Quinn lives on the edge. Sentenced as a thief at the age of 12, she’s rescued from the gallows by a woman posing as a prison warden. In her new home, Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls, Mary acquires a singular education, fine manners, and a surprising opportunity. The school is a cover for the Agency — an elite, top secret corps of female investigators with a reputation for results — and at 17, Mary’s about to join their ranks.
-
-
yes, it's YA-but credible for genre for any age
- By connie on 02-25-11
By: Y. S. Lee