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The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's summary
For fans of Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, and Donna Tartt - the brilliant, intricately woven new novel by Tom Rachman, author of The Imperfectionists
Following one of the most critically acclaimed fiction debuts in years, New York Times best-selling author Tom Rachman returns with a brilliant, intricately woven novel about a young woman who travels the world to make sense of her puzzling past.
Tooly Zylberberg, the American owner of an isolated bookshop in the Welsh countryside, conducts a life full of reading, but with few human beings. Books are safer than people, who might ask awkward questions about her life. She prefers never to mention the strange events of her youth, which mystify and worry her still.
Taken from home as a girl, Tooly found herself spirited away by a group of seductive outsiders, implicated in capers from Asia to Europe to the United States. But who were her abductors? Why did they take her? What did they really want? There was Humphrey, the curmudgeonly Russian with a passion for reading; there was the charming but tempestuous Sarah, who sowed chaos in her wake; and there was Venn, the charismatic leader whose worldview transformed Tooly forever. Until, quite suddenly, he disappeared.
Years later, Tooly believes she will never understand the true story of her own life. Then startling news arrives from a long-lost boyfriend in New York, raising old mysteries and propelling her on a quest around the world in search of answers.
Tom Rachman - an author celebrated for humanity, humor, and wonderful characters - has produced a stunning novel that reveals the tale not just of one woman but of the past quarter-century as well, from the end of the Cold War to the dominance of American empire to the digital revolution of today. Leaping between decades, and from Bangkok to Brooklyn, this is a breathtaking novel about long-buried secrets and how we must choose to make our own place in the world. It will confirm Rachman’s reputation as one of the most exciting young writers we have.
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Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
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Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
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French Exit
- A Novel
- By: Patrick deWitt
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts. Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit.
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deWitt deLivers Eccentric Quirky Characters
- By Liberty on 09-23-18
By: Patrick deWitt
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
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Outside Looking In
- A Novel
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology PhD student, and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a freewheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living.
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STORYTELLING AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
- By Christopher Meeks on 05-25-19
By: T. C. Boyle
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After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
By: Lori Ostlund
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Ordinary Thunderstorms
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.
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Amazing Story Teller
- By Dorothy on 09-07-14
By: William Boyd
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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High Dive
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Doyle Gerard
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
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Humor? Not Funny.
- By W Perry Hall on 04-10-16
By: Jonathan Lee
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
What listeners say about The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- AmmPnW
- 03-18-16
Captivating and a delight to read
Some had suggested it for those who loved the Goldfinch by Donna Tart. In my opinion, while this story developed over the progression of the protagonist's life starting in early adolescence much like the Goldfinch, the unraveling of the characters in Rise and Fall was spellbinding and hard to bear in some parts. May have even shed a tear while riding the bus listening to this non-traditional story. Additionally, there were sever quotes I would stop to highlight in my Kindle so that I could keep them as tokens from a well-written novel.
Worth the length if you like character development and topics on family.
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1 person found this helpful
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- snowy plover
- 06-27-14
Tough to follow on tape
What did you like best about The Rise & Fall of Great Powers? What did you like least?
Rachman switches the time frames back and forth from year to year and it's really hard to keep track of with the audiobook. This is a book I would much rather have gotten to read on my iPad or in paper.
Would you recommend The Rise & Fall of Great Powers to your friends? Why or why not?
I'm not done yet so not sure. This isn't just a straight story, but a very wandering narrative so it's impossible to tell where it's going.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-10-14
Wonderful book. Superb narration.
If you could sum up The Rise & Fall of Great Powers in three words, what would they be?
Fresh but timeless.
What did you like best about this story?
Memorable characters; unusual settings.
Have you listened to any of Penelope Rawlins’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I've never heard this narrator before, but she made the story very real to me.
Any additional comments?
If you're still mourning the end of The Goldfinch, this isn't a bad follow up.
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- Joyann Sanz-agero
- 08-09-14
Weird People to Know
The title of the book leads one to believe that we may meet people of great power, but we don't. We follow a child, girl, woman named Tully as she grows in spite of little or no real nurturing by parents and others with whom she lives.We are lleft with a quasi happy feeling that anther person has come into her life just at a moment when we the reader feel that she is at a low in her life that needs a companion. Another man who will provide her with friendship now that she has untangled who were those people she was influenced by throughout her life thus far. I often thought about a abandoning this book as not many if any of the characters to whom I felt a relationship with. The reader was a woman with talents of dramatizing and giving different voice to the several main characters, though it was sometimes annoying.
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- Jeremiah
- 10-21-24
slow and boring
I struggle to not finish a story, but I wish I would have stopped after the first child chapters.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-16-18
doesn't live up to title or review
Slow moving, you keep waiting for the "smoking gun" that never shows up. The story has too many holes, straining believability.
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- Rose
- 11-04-15
Couldn't even finish
Would you try another book from Tom Rachman and/or Penelope Rawlins?
I would not try another book by Tom Rachman, but I would be open to hearing Penelope Rawlins reading a different novel.
What was most disappointing about Tom Rachman’s story?
By half way through I still wasn't interested in the main character. It jumped around too much between locale and past/present. By the time I had figured out how some of the characters connected, the book skipped to a different time/place in her history and I had to re-establish myself within the story. Maybe this would be a better novel to read than to listen to. I was unable to stay interested in the story because it took so much of my focus to follow.
Any additional comments?
There are books you can't put down or can't stop listening to - sneaking in a few minutes where ever you can. And then there is this novel... I had to talk myself in to listening for the few hours I made it through.
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- Robert Fairbanks
- 07-17-14
speed reading
What would have made The Rise & Fall of Great Powers better?
The narrator spoke so quickly that I missed at least half of what she said, making the story unintelligible.
Has The Rise & Fall of Great Powers turned you off from other books in this genre?
Noo
Would you be willing to try another one of Penelope Rawlins’s performances?
No
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