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The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy
- Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
Writing as Barbara Vine, award-winning mystery author Ruth Rendell outshines even her own brilliant reputation for psychological intrigue. The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy is mesmerizing as it probes the dark recesses of the psyche. Vine lures you, clue by clue, into a labyrinth of sexuality, love, and shame. When literary celebrity Gerald Candless suddenly dies, the beautiful façade he has carefully created begins to crumble. Behind the vision of the happy family on the English seashore lie Candless’ inexplicable cruelty toward his wife, his manic devotion to his daughters, and the mysterious sources of his fiction. To assuage her grief, his loving daughter Sarah begins a memoir project. But it soon becomes an obsessive search for identity. As Sarah digs deeper and deeper into her father’s secret past, the startling logic of his puzzling behavior is revealed. Narrator Sterlin, with her soft British accent and perfect pacing, coaxes out all the novel’s haunting nuances.
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By: John Boyne
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The Museum of Innocence
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (translator)
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
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one of the very best I've ever heard
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 03-06-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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Maeve's Times
- In Her Own Words
- By: Maeve Binchy
- Narrated by: Kate Binchy
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.
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A GLIMPSE THROUGH MAEVE'S LOOKING GLASS
- By jstrfic on 08-08-17
By: Maeve Binchy
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My Real Children
- By: Jo Walton
- Narrated by: Alison Larkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know - what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead.
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A strange take on an otherwise simple story.
- By Lauren on 01-08-15
By: Jo Walton
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Late in the Day
- A Novel
- By: Tessa Hadley
- Narrated by: Abigail Thaw
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their 20s. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer’s evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: She is at the hospital. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach, with his generous, grounded spirit, was the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. The loss warps their relationships.
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It's all in the performance
- By RueRue on 02-08-19
By: Tessa Hadley
What listeners say about The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Linda C
- 12-21-23
At the heart of a mystery
A writer with an unusually close and powerful relationship with his two daughters is at the center of this story. Writing his biography after his death, the younger daughter discovers that her father held a secret, something so terrible that he changed his whole life to escape it, ruining the happiness of his wife along the way. Of course she sets out to discover the truth, uncovering more and more mystery with every step. The ultimate answer is both more and less terrible than I could have imagined.
Barbara Vine develops character as well as any author I know, and this novel is no exception. The mother and two daughters are fascinating people whose lives have been shaped around the somewhat bizarre personality of this strange and brilliant man, and there are no easy explanations for anything.
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- Melancholy
- 01-03-24
Another twisted tale
If you like dark and twisty mysteries that keep you guessing till the very end this is for you.
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- Sasha the book eater
- 10-24-22
Insightful and moving tale of unforeseen consequences and constrained lives
This novel is unexpectedly daring, not for its subject matter which is more easily guessed today than when it was written or set, but for the slow reveal. It’s a mystery, yet one in which nothing actually happens for most of the book. And yet it keeps you riveted. It unflinchingly portrays casual cruelty within a society and a family. Of special note is the hypocrisy and ignorance of even the most ‘tolerant’ and ‘progressive’ people not so long ago. Detailed characters and believable dialogue, expertly voiced by a great voice talent.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Michael
- 08-25-15
Great Book
This is a great mystery book. I love how the writing pulls you into the mystery and you can't put the headphones down :)
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2 people found this helpful
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- lyl
- 01-01-13
One of my Top 20 books
Loved this book when I read it and equally love audible version. I know Ruth Rendell's detective sells more books, but I LOVE her books written under name of Barbara Vine. Psychological suspense at its best.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Lee Held
- 01-15-20
Not compelling
I'm a big fan of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine. But somehow this book didn't do it for me. The characters were not especially interesting and the 'reveal' not much either. Perhaps it's a matter of how culture has changed regarding homosexuals. The writing is as good as ever but the story itself just disappointed.
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