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Full Hearts And Empty Bellies
- Narrated by: Annie Aldington
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
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Full Hearts And Empty Bellies
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Publisher's summary
Winifred Foley grew up in the 1920s, a bright, determined miner's daughter - in a world of unspoilt beauty and desperate hardship, in which women were widowed at 30 and children died of starvation. Living hand to mouth in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, Foley - 'our Poll' - had a loving family and the woods and streams of a forest 'better than heaven' as a playground.
But a brother and sister were dead in infancy, bread had to be begged from kindly neighbours and she never had a new pair of shoes or a shop-bought doll. And most terrible of all, like her sister before her, at 14 little Poll had to leave her beloved forest for the city, bound for a life in service among London's grey terraces.
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Another Kate Atkinson multi-generational story
- By Satisfied Customer on 11-08-18
By: Kate Atkinson
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Owls Do Cry
- By: Janet Frame
- Narrated by: Heather Bolton
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Owls Do Cry is Janet Frame's first novel. She describes her idea behind it in the second volume of her autobiography: 'Pictures of great treasure in the midst of sadness and waste haunted me and I began to think, in fiction, of a childhood, home life, hospital life, using people known to me as a base for main characters, and inventing minor characters.'
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4 out of 5 stars
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well told but a wee bit depressing.
- By Muzza on 11-03-19
By: Janet Frame
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South Riding
- By: Winifred Holtby
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred's own mother).
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4 out of 5 stars
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Worth Revisiting
- By Ilana on 11-04-12
By: Winifred Holtby
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The Star of Kazan
- By: Eva Ibbotson
- Narrated by: Ruth Jones
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. One day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door.
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2 out of 5 stars
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not recommended for pleasure
- By SEE on 08-27-17
By: Eva Ibbotson
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Bless This House
- By: Norah Lofts
- Narrated by: Michael Tudor Barnes, Nicolette McKenzie
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story5 out of 5 stars 30
The house was built in the Old Queen's time: built for an Elizabethan pirate who was knighted for the plunder he brought home. It survived many eras, many reigns: it saw the passing of Cromwell and the Civil War. It became rich with an Indian Nabob and poor with a 20th century innkeeper. It saw wars, and lovers, and death. Children were born there, both heirs and bastards. It had ghosts and legends and a history that grew stranger with every generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bless This House - my take
- By Kalona1982 on 04-05-09
By: Norah Lofts
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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 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
"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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Lark Rise
- By: Flora Thompson
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 52
Lark Rise is Flora Thompson's childhood memories of a north Oxfordshire village, the people who lived and worked in it, and a way of life that has totally disappeared. The story is built around Laura and her brother Edmund, through whose eyes are seen 'old Sally', whose grandfather built the house she lived in before the enclosure of the heathland, children's games, the interaction of village and gentry, and the way in which the seasons governed life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A glimpse...
- By Roses Revealing Reviews on 05-31-20
By: Flora Thompson
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The Tale of Hill Top Farm
- By: Susan Wittig Albert
- Narrated by: Virginia Leishman
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 223
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 179
It's 1905, and to recover from the loss of her fiance, Potter moves into a small farmhouse in Sawrey. Populated by colorful characters, both humans and critters, her new life is full of promise. That is, until a villager dies and murder is suspected. Now it's up to this amateur sleuth to find a killer roaming the English countryside.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fun to read
- By Richard on 11-29-10
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Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- By: Jennifer Worth
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,353
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8,425
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,399
At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best book I've listened to this year
- By Richard on 06-12-13
By: Jennifer Worth
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How Green Was My Valley
- By: Richard Llewellyn
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 652
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 569
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 568
How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn’s best-selling - and timeless - classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn’s characters fight, love, laugh, and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people. Richard Llewellyn (1906–1983), a Welsh novelist, was born in Hendon, England, in the county of Middlesex.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The rhythm of life... the pattern of words...
- By Jan on 04-16-13
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The Woman of the House
- By: Alice Taylor
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
An enchanting and nostalgic tale of Ireland in the 1950s by Ireland’s favourite writer, Alice Taylor. The Phelans have owned Mossgrove for generations. The small, rural Irish farm has been the pride of them all until Ned's wife, Martha, arrives and begins to undermine generations of hard work and happiness. She resents the deep history of the place and sets about making it her own, shutting out what is left of Ned's family. She is particularly jealous of Ned's sister, Kate, a local nurse and doting aunt to Martha's children.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brings you right there
- By Amazon Customer on 08-26-20
By: Alice Taylor
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Mother Carey's Chickens
- By: Kate Douglas Wiggin
- Narrated by: Anne Hancock
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
The sudden death of the father of the family results in the drastic reduction of the Careys' income and they must leave their comfortable home in Boston. Nancy Carey, the eldest, recalls a vacation in Maine when they all picnicked in the garden of a big, vacant house that her father loved. She discovers that the house is available, the rent is cheap, and persuades her mother that life in The Yellow House in Beulah, Maine is the perfect place to begin their new life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A very cozy book =)
- By Camilla on 03-01-17
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Cold Comfort Farm
- Penguin Classics
- By: Stella Gibbons
- Narrated by: Pearl Mackie
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 365
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 316
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 316
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at 19, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last 20 years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very, very amusing, a go to if one needs cheering
- By Laura G. Marcantoni on 11-05-20
By: Stella Gibbons
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Christmas at Thrush Green
- By: Miss Read
- Narrated by: Nicolette McKenzie
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story5 out of 5 stars 56
The villagers of Thrush Green celebrate Christmas traditionally, in a way that has hardly changed over the generations. Children eagerly hang up their stockings, families go to church together and everyone enjoys the treats of the festive season. And when it snows as the carol singers make their way round the cottages on the green, it looks as if Christmas will be perfect this year. But not everything is as peaceful as it seems.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wish there were more
- By Anne Milnes on 10-26-20
By: Miss Read
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Running on Red Dog Road
- And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood
- By: Drema Hall Berkheimer
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 189
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 159
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 160
Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator’s attempt at a southern accent distracting to story
- By Ryan C. Bango on 01-05-22