Wolf Hall
A Novel
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Wolf Hall
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
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By:
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Hilary Mantel
About this listen
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe oppose him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum and a deadlock.
Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. The son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a bully, and a charmer, Cromwell has broken all the rules of a rigid society in his rise to power and is preparing to break some more. Rising from personal disaster - the loss of his young family and of Wolsey, his beloved patron - he picks his way deftly through a court where man is wolf to man. Pitting himself against parliament, the political establishment, and the papacy, he is prepared to reshape England to his own and Henry’s desires.
In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, Wolf Hall recreates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2009 Hilary Mantel (P)2009 WF Howes Ltd.Listeners also enjoyed...
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3 out of 5 stars
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DON'T FALL FOR THE PRINT VERSION AMAZON REVIEWS
- By The Louligan on 03-06-14
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In the Name of the Family
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Dunant
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 328
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Story4 out of 5 stars 326
It is 1502, and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, age 22 - already three times married and a pawn in her father's plans - is discovering her own power. And then there is his son Cesare Borgia, brilliant, ruthless, and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with Machiavelli that gives the Florentine diplomat a master class in the dark arts of power and politics.
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4 out of 5 stars
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One of the best historical fiction novels
- By GrandmaNurseHeather on 04-13-17
By: Sarah Dunant
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Reign of Madness
- By: Lynn Cullen
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Juana of Castile, third child of the Spanish monarchs Isabel and Fernando, grows up with no hope of inheriting her parents' crowns, but as a princess knows her duty: to further her family's ambitions through marriage. Yet stories of courtly love, and of her parents' own legendary romance, surround her. When she weds the Duke of Burgundy, a young man so beautiful that he is known as Philippe the Handsome, she dares to hope that she might have both love and crowns.
By: Lynn Cullen
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Isabella: Braveheart of France
- By: Colin Falconer
- Narrated by: Anne Johnstonbrown
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 180
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 156
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Story4 out of 5 stars 154
12-year-old Isabella, a French princess marries the King of England - only to discover he has a terrible secret. Ten long years later she is in utter despair - does she submit to a lifetime of solitude and a spiritual death - or seize her destiny and take the throne of England for herself? Isabella is just twelve years old when she marries Edward II of England. For the young princess it is love at first sight - but Edward has a terrible secret that threatens to tear their marriage - and England apart.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A Bizarre "Reader's Digest" Version of History...
- By Sara on 01-06-15
By: Colin Falconer
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The Memoirs of Mary, Queen of Scots
- By: Carolly Erickson
- Narrated by: Rebekah Germain
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Born Queen of Scotland, married as a young girl to the invalid young King of France, Mary took the reins of the unruly kingdom of Scotland as a young widow and fought to keep her throne. A second marriage to her handsome but dissolute cousin Lord Darnley ended in murder and scandal, while a third marriage to the dashing, commanding Lord Bothwell, the love of her life, gave her joy but widened the scandal and surrounded her with enduring ill repute.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Fiction being the key word
- By Bonnie-Ann B on 09-25-09
By: Carolly Erickson
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The Town House
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Juliet Prague, Martyn Read
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
"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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Another winner by Norah Lofts
- By Bird Lady 147 on 10-03-17
By: Norah Lofts
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Green Darkness
- By: Anya Seton
- Narrated by: Heather Wilds
- Length: 23 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 272
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 240
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Story4 out of 5 stars 242
The marriage of the Englishman Richard Marsdon and his young American wife, Celia, slowly turns tragic as Richard withdraws into himself and Celia suffers a debilitating emotional breakdown. A wise mystic realizes that Celia can escape her past only by reliving it. She journeys back four hundred years to her former life as the servant girl Celia de Bohun during the reign of Edward VI - and to her doomed love affair with the chaplain Stephen Marsdon.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A different narrator would have made all the difference.
- By J on 06-04-15
By: Anya Seton
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The Crown
- By: Nancy Bilyeau
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 251
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 216
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Story4 out of 5 stars 215
In this debut historical thriller, an aristocratic young nun must find a legendary crown in order to save her father’s life and preserve all she holds dear. When novitiate nun Joanna Stafford learns her rebel cousin is condemned by King Henry VIII to be burned at the stake, she makes the decision to break the sacred rule of enclosure and flee her Dominican order in Dartford to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, Sir Richard Stafford, is sent to the Tower of London.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Torture
- By S. Wells on 03-24-13
By: Nancy Bilyeau
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The Autobiography of Henry VIII
- By: Margaret George
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 41 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 685
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 516
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 517
Margaret George's novel brings into focus the larger-than-life King Henry VIII, monarch of prodigious appetites for wine, women, and song.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfection!
- By Amy M. Walts on 10-20-07
By: Margaret George
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A Vision of Light
- A Margaret of Ashbury Novel, Book 1
- By: Judith Merkle Riley
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 121
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 120
Margaret of Ashbury wants to write her life story. However, like most women in 14th-century England, she is illiterate. Three clerics contemptuously decline to be Margaret’s scribe, and only the threat of starvation persuades Brother Gregory, a Carthusian friar with a mysterious past, to take on the task. As she narrates her life, we discover a woman of startling resourcefulness.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Old fashioned heroine
- By Margaret on 06-22-13
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The Agincourt Bride
- By: Joanna Hickson
- Narrated by: Catherine Harvey
- Length: 16 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 348
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 303
When her own first child is tragically still-born, the young Mette is pressed into service as a wet-nurse at the court of the mad king, Charles VI of France. Her young charge is the princess, Catherine de Valois, caught up in the turbulence and chaos of life at court. Mette and the child forge a bond, one that transcends Mette’s lowly position. But as Catherine approaches womanhood, her unique position seals her fate as a pawn between two powerful dynasties.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing
- By Michelle on 02-16-13
By: Joanna Hickson
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Empress
- Godspeaker, Book 1
- By: Karen Miller
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 20 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 165
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Story4 out of 5 stars 166
In a family torn apart by poverty and violence, Hekat is no more than an unwanted mouth to feed, worth only a few coins from a passing slave trader. But Hekat was not born to be a slave. For her, a different path has been chosen. It is a path that will take her from stinking back alleys to the house of her God, from blood-drenched battlefields to the glittering palaces of Mijak. This is the story of Hekat, slave to no man.
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1 out of 5 stars
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depressing and left me feeling empty
- By Bonnie on 09-16-09
By: Karen Miller
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A Place of Greater Safety
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 33 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 279
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 243
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 242
It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden - and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Disaster
- By Frank Dudley Berry Jr. on 08-01-13
By: Hilary Mantel
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The Winthrop Woman
- By: Anya Seton
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 27 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 879
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 792
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 789
In 1631 Elizabeth Winthrop, newly widowed with an infant daughter, set sail for the New World. Against a background of rigidity and conformity she dared to befriend Anne Hutchinson at the moment of her banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony; dared to challenge a determined army captain bent on the massacre of her friends, the Siwanoy Indians; and, above all, dared to love a man as her heart and her whole being commanded.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Historical Fiction that Aged Very Well
- By Lulu on 11-26-14
By: Anya Seton
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Mistress of the Art of Death
- A Novel
- By: Ariana Franklin
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,886
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,101
In medieval England, four children have been murdered, and the townsfolk blame their Jewish neighbors. The doctor chosen to investigate is a woman, Adelia. As she examines the victims and retraces their last steps, she must conceal her true identity in order to avoid accusations of witchcraft. Along the way, she's assisted by Sir Rowley Picot, a man with a personal stake in the investigation. A former Crusader knight, Rowley may be a needed friend - or the fiend for whom they are searching.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History-Mystery of the Year & its only March
- By Irenehope on 03-02-07
By: Ariana Franklin
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The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
- By: Sandra Gulland
- Narrated by: Kim Handysides
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
In this first of three books inspired by the life of Josephine Bonaparte, Sandra Gulland has created a novel of immense and magical proportions. We meet Josephine in the exotic and lush Martinico, where an old island woman predicts that one day she will be queen. The journey from the remote village of her birth to the height of European elegance is long, but Josephine's fortune proves to be true.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Performance...ugh
- By Lisa on 02-17-18
By: Sandra Gulland
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Swordspoint
- A Melodrama of Manners
- By: Ellen Kushner
- Narrated by: Ellen Kushner, Dion Graham, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 1,425
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,273
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 1,275
On the treacherous streets of Riverside, a man lives and dies by the sword. Even the nobles on the Hill turn to duels to settle their disputes. Within this elite, dangerous world, Richard St. Vier is the undisputed master, as skilled as he is ruthless--until a death by the sword is met with outrage instead of awe, and the city discovers that the line between hero and villain can be altered in the blink of an eye.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ellen Kushner Owes me 30$
- By Daryl on 12-04-11
By: Ellen Kushner
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Royal Mistress
- By: Anne Easter Smith
- Narrated by: Heather Wilds
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 265
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 236
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 233
Jane Lambert, the quick-witted and alluring daughter of a silk merchant, is twenty-two and still unmarried. When Jane’s father finally finds her a match, she’s married off to the dull, older silk merchant William Shore. Marriage doesn’t stop Jane from flirtation, however, and when the king’s chamberlain, Will Hastings, comes to her husband’s shop, Will knows King Edward will find her irresistible.
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2 out of 5 stars
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All history, no romance!
- By Erin on 07-05-13