Beasts and Children
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Beasts and Children
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Narrated by:
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Susan Bennett
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By:
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Amy Parker
About this listen
In the tradition of Lorrie Moore, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Rebecca Lee, this debut story collection cuts into the sometimes dark heart of the American family.
From the tense territory of a sagging, grand porch in Texas to a gated community in steamy Thailand to a lonely apartment in nondescript suburbia, these linked stories unwind the lives of three families as they navigate ever-shifting landscapes. Wry and sharp, dark and subversive, they keep watch as these characters make the choices that will change the courses of their lives and run into each other in surprising, unforgettable ways.
The Bowmans are declining Texas gentry, heirs to an airline fortune, surrounded by a patriarch's stuffed trophies and lost dreams. They will each be haunted by the past as they strive to escape its force.
The Fosters are diplomats' kids who might as well be orphans. Jill and Maizie grow up privileged amid poverty, powerless to change the lives of those around them and uncertain whether they have the power to change their own.
The Guzmans have moved between Colombia and the United States for two generations, each seeking opportunity for the next, only to find that the American dream can be as crushing as it is elusive.
Amy Parker's debut collection considers - with an unfailingly observant eye - our failures and our successes, our fractures and our connections, our impact and our evanescence. She marks herself a worthy heir to the long tradition of smart women casting cool and careful glances at the American middle class.
©2016 Amy Parker (P)2016 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
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A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4 out of 5 stars 90
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
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Vampires in the Lemon Grove
- Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Joy Osmanski, Kaleo Griffith, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 282
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 252
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Story4 out of 5 stars 253
In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Stylish modern magic realism
- By Ryan on 04-10-13
By: Karen Russell
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Promise
- A Novel
- By: Minrose Gwin
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 60
In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart - one Black, one White; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager - fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Mostly Disappointing
- By Anjoli on 06-15-19
By: Minrose Gwin
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Battleborn
- By: Claire Vaye Watkins
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Morgan Hallett, Laura Knight Keating, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful magnificent stories beautifully told
- By Pedro Ramirez on 12-03-15
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Bone Gap
- By: Laura Ruby
- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 335
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 309
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Story4 out of 5 stars 308
Bone Gap is the story of Roza, a beautiful girl who is taken from a quiet Midwestern town and imprisoned by a mysterious man, and Finn, the only witness, who cannot forgive himself for being unable to identify her kidnapper. As we follow them through their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, and their uncertain futures, acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beauty is In the Eye of the Beholder
- By FanB14 on 11-23-15
By: Laura Ruby
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 638
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 570
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 568
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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The New Moon's Arms
- By: Nalo Hopkinson
- Narrated by: Gin Hammond
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 398
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 352
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 353
Calamity is confronting two big transitions: the death of her beloved father and the beginning of menopause, a physical shift that has rekindled her gift for finding lost things. Suddenly, she is getting hot flashes that seem to forge objects out of thin air, most notably a four-year old boy. As Calamity takes the child into her care, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Then, Calamity must reawaken to the mysteries surrounding her own childhood and the early disappearance of her mother.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What a joy
- By newmoon on 07-05-19
By: Nalo Hopkinson
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Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 483
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 434
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 431
For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Church of Marvels
- A Novel
- By: Leslie Parry
- Narrated by: Denice Stradling
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 127
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4 out of 5 stars 114
New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs.
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5 out of 5 stars
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If Dickens needed a NY location for a story..
- By Sandi from Oregon on 05-13-15
By: Leslie Parry
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Hour of the Bees
- By: Lindsay Eagar
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 217
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 195
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 194
While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina - Carol - is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents move the grandfather she's never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love it!
- By Lucy Manetti on 04-10-17
By: Lindsay Eagar
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Other Voices, Other Rooms
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Cody Roberts
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 147
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Story4 out of 5 stars 130
At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Capote’s coming of age story
- By Daniel Diffin on 11-08-23
By: Truman Capote
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Gathering of Waters
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 187
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 188
Gathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi - a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families. Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!!
- By Naima on 07-26-16
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The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
- By: Tiffany Baker
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 507
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 235
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Story4 out of 5 stars 237
Truly Plaice, an overly large and ungainly girl, is the polar opposite of her sister, Serena Jane, the epitome of feminine perfection. With their parents dead, Truly and Serena Jane are separated: Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation.
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3 out of 5 stars
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meh...
- By Victoria on 02-25-09
By: Tiffany Baker
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Hemlock Grove
- or, The Wise Wolf
- By: Brian McGreevy
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 425
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 385
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Story4 out of 5 stars 384
The body of a young girl is found mangled and murdered in the woods of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of the abandoned Godfrey Steel Mill. A manhunt ensues - though the authorities aren’t sure if it's a man they should be looking for.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Very similar to the TV show
- By Erin on 01-01-14
By: Brian McGreevy
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The Incarnations
- A Novel
- By: Susan Barker
- Narrated by: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 177
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 162
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Story4 out of 5 stars 162
Who are you? You must be wondering. I am your soul mate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of 16 million in search of you. So begins the first letter that falls into Wang's lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang's previous lives - from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution.
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3 out of 5 stars
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What was that you said?
- By cecil reniche-smith on 08-29-15
By: Susan Barker