The Usual Desire to Kill
A Novel
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The Usual Desire to Kill
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Narrated by:
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Harriet Walter
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By:
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Camilla Barnes
About this listen
An often hilarious, surprisingly moving portrait of a long-married couple, seen through the eyes of their wickedly observant daughter—for fans of A Man Called Ove and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983.
Miranda’s father is a retired professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Miranda’s mother likes to bring conversation back to “the War,” although she was born after it ended. Married for fifty years, they are uncommonly set in their ways. Miranda plays the role of translator when she visits, communicating the desires or complaints of one parent to the other and then venting her frustration to her sister and her daughter. At the end of a visit, she reports “the usual desire to kill.”
This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.
©2025 Camilla Barnes (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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By: Heather McGowan
-
A Murder for Miss Hortense
- A Mystery
- By: Mel Pennant
- Narrated by: Debra Michaels
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Retired nurse, avid gardener, and renowned cake maker Miss Hortense has lived in Bigglesweigh, a quiet suburb of Birmingham, England, since she emigrated from Jamaica in 1960. She takes great pride in her home, starching her lace curtains bright white, and she can tell if she’s being shortchanged on turmeric before she’s taken her first bite of a beef patty. A career in nursing has also left her afraid of nobody, whether an interfering priest or a local drug dealer, and she’s an expert in deciphering other people’s secrets with just a glance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Charming murder mystery
- By Susan A. Fowler on 06-23-25
By: Mel Pennant
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Bad Nature
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Courage
- Narrated by: Cia Court
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 6
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Story3 out of 5 stars 6
When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Sad life, sad ending
- By C. R. Choate on 05-17-25
By: Ariel Courage
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Keine Kleinigkeit
- By: Camilla Barnes, Dirk van Gunsteren - Übersetzer
- Narrated by: Anja Dorrer
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
"Es war wie immer. Ich könnte sie umbringen." Mit "Boswell", ihrer alten Tiefkühltruhe, sind sie vor zwanzig Jahren nach Frankreich gezogen: Mirandas Vater, pensionierter Oxford-Professor, der keine Diskussion scheut. Und ihre Mutter, die jede Gelegenheit nutzt, über den Krieg zu sprechen, den sie selbst nie erlebt hat. Nach fünzig Ehejahren haben sie die ein oder andere Eigenart entwickelt, und die Besuche bei ihnen stellen für Miranda immer öfter eine emotionale Herausforderung dar. "Ich könnte sie beide umbringen", schreibt sie dann an ihre Schwester.
By: Camilla Barnes, and others
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Rabbit Moon
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Haigh
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin, Yu-Li Alice Shen
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
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4 out of 5 stars
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dark
- By Maryanne T. on 04-30-25
By: Jennifer Haigh
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Audition
- A Novel
- By: Katie Kitamura
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 56
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day–partner, parent, creator, muse–and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Bizarre
- By Kevin on 04-23-25
By: Katie Kitamura
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Fieldwork
- A Novel
- By: Mischa Berlinski
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 285
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 108
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Story4 out of 5 stars 109
When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, working for one of Thailand's English-language newspapers. One evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist has been found dead, a suicide, in the Thai prison where she was serving a 50-year sentence for murder. Motivated first by simple curiosity, then by deeper and more mysterious feelings, Mischa searches relentlessly to discover the details of her crime.
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5 out of 5 stars
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WOW WOW WOW
- By Lee on 05-02-07
By: Mischa Berlinski
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10 Marchfield Square
- By: Nicola Whyte
- Narrated by: Nneka Okoye
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story4 out of 5 stars 8
When a minor criminal is murdered in the smallest residential square in London, elderly heiress and landlady Celeste van Duren recruits two of her tenants to investigate. Her cleaner, Audrey, knows everyone and is liked by all, while failed writer Lewis is known by no one. He hates his job, hates his life, and he’s not that fond of Audrey either—but Celeste is persuasive. As they hunt for clues in and around the Square, they discover everyone has something to hide, including their fellow residents. Audrey and Lewis must find a way to work together if they’re to find the killer in their midst.
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3 out of 5 stars
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It's OK
- By wisconsinclark on 06-03-25
By: Nicola Whyte
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I See You've Called in Dead
- A Novel
- By: John Kenney
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 180
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.
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5 out of 5 stars
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wonderful book. Comic edge but full of heart
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-25
By: John Kenney
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Mona Acts Out
- A Novel
- By: Mischa Berlinski
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Celebrated stage actress Mona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning to the clamor of guests packed into her Manhattan apartment and to a wave of dread: her in-laws are lurking on the other side of the bedroom door; she’s still fighting with her husband; and in just a few weeks she will begin rehearsals as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, the hardest role in theater. In an impulsive burst, Mona bounds out the door with the family dog in tow (“I forgot the parsley!” is her lame excuse) to find her estranged mentor, Milton Katz, who was recently forced out of the legendary theater company he founded.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Fun book with an inside look at live theatre
- By Elizabeth Ratner on 06-29-25
By: Mischa Berlinski
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Snap
- By: Belinda Bauer
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 432
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 397
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Story4 out of 5 stars 394
"Jack's in charge," said his mother, as she disappeared up the road to get help. "I won't be long." So 11-year-old Jack and his two sisters wait on the hard shoulder in their stifling, broken-down car, bickering and whining and playing I-Spy until she comes back. But their mother doesn't come back. She never comes back. And after that long hot summer day, nothing will ever be the same again. Three years later, Jack's 15 and still in charge.
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4 out of 5 stars
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4.39 stars.....contender for The Booker
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 09-30-18
By: Belinda Bauer
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The Margaret Code
- By: Richard Hooton
- Narrated by: Maggie Ollerenshaw
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Margaret Winterbottom, 89, has lived on Garnon Crescent her entire life—except for a few years she never talks about. She knows all the neighbors: their lives, their hopes, their heartbreaks. Only recently, Margaret’s memory isn’t what it used to be. She’s sure Barbara, her best friend and neighbor, told her something very important . . . but what? When Barbara is found dead in an apparent homicide, Margaret is determined to recover the missing memory.
By: Richard Hooton
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Freakslaw
- By: Jane Flett
- Narrated by: Abigail Lawrie
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 6
It is the summer of ‘97 and the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change. Enter the Freakslaw―a travelling carnival of deviant queers and architects of mayhem. There’s Gloria, fortune teller and worm charmer; her daughter Nancy, a contortionist witch; big-hearted tightrope walker, Werewolf Louie; not to mention illusionists and conjoined twins, Cass and Henry, and tattooed human pincushion, Pin Gal.
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2 out of 5 stars
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WHERE IS THE HORROR?
- By K. Baima on 06-24-25
By: Jane Flett
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The Peepshow
- The Murders at Rillington Place
- By: Kate Summerscale
- Narrated by: Nicola Walker
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 15
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 15
In this riveting true story, Kate Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie’s victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired, and the truth about what happened inside the house. What she finds sheds fascinating light on the origins of our fixation with true crime—and suggests a new solution to one of the most notorious cases of the century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A thoroughly researched time
- By Caitlyn Harrison on 06-03-25
By: Kate Summerscale
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Sour Cherry
- By: Natalia Theodoridou
- Narrated by: Erifyli Gigante
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him
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5 out of 5 stars
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Oooooh! So good.
- By KONeill on 05-13-25
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Company
- By: Max Barry
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 593
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 239
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Story4 out of 5 stars 243
Nestled among Seattle's skyscrapers, The Zephyr Holdings Building is a bleak rectangle topped by an orange-and-black logo that gives no hint of Zephyr's business. Lack of clarity, it turns out, is Zephyr's defining characteristic. The floors are numbered in reverse. No one has ever seen the CEO or glimpsed his office on the first (i.e., top) floor. Yet every day people clip on their ID tags, file into the building, sit at their desks, and hope that they're not about to be outsourced.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Wonderful Experience
- By Jacob on 02-08-06
By: Max Barry
The acceptance of sadness
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Brilliant
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Keep with it.
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Excellent, subtle humor and heartbreaking family dynamics.
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I.iced it.
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About my worst listen in years
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