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Mercy Gene
- The Man-Made Making of a Mad Woman
- Narrated by: JD Derbyshire
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
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Mercy Gene
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Publisher's summary
Told in kaleidoscopic bursts of erratic recollections, daydreams, poetry, and lists, Mercy Gene is the powerful, genre-smashing debut work of auto-fiction by acclaimed writer, playwright, and comedian JD Derbyshire. Narrated by Derbyshire themself, Mercy Gene is a beautiful, humorous, and sometimes brutal look at queerness, gender confusion, institutionalization, addiction, and abuse.
Critic reviews
“Derbyshire’s affecting, insightful and informative memoir does not hide from horror nor suggest any easy fixes. A reader’s pleasure, though, comes with seeing one victory over tremendously long odds.” — Josef Grubisic, Vancouver Sun
“Brilliant and heart-searing, Mercy Gene is about what it means to be ensnared by others’ hard definitions of who you are as you desperately try to stay inside a brain, a body, a life. With the insight and charisma of a god, Derbyshire undresses language to get to the very marrow of their experience. Their wisdom is the rare kind that comes from the dangerous and costly brink-of-sanity, brink-of-death view.” — Claudia Dey, author of Heartbreaker
“Mercy Gene is an incredible book that lifted me right up off the ground and away to other places both hard and soft. It’s essential reading for anyone wanting to know what the agony of psychic pain is really like, but it’s also very funny. Thank you, thank you to JD for this ferocious, devastating and illuminating, tender and vulnerable, mountain peak and universal embrace of a book and for being in the world.” — Miriam Toews, author of Fright Night
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
A searing confessional infused with the darkest humor, Permanent Midnight chronicles the opiated abyss of a Hollywood screenwriter and his formidable climb into sobriety. Made into a major motion picture starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Permanent Midnight is revered by critics and an ever-growing cult of devoted fans as one of the most compelling contemporary memoirs.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Point deduction for the recording
- By Amazon Customer on 11-21-20
By: Jerry Stahl, and others
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Any Man
- A Novel
- By: Amber Tamblyn
- Narrated by: Glenn Davis, Robin Miles, Therese Plummer, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 475
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 432
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Story4 out of 5 stars 431
In this electric and provocative debut novel, Amber Tamblyn blends genres of poetry, prose, and elements of suspense to give shape to the shocking narratives of victims of sexual violence, mapping the destructive ways in which our society perpetuates rape culture, brilliantly brought to life through a multi-voice performance featuring Glenn Davis, Ben Foster, Marc Maron, Jason Ritter, John Roberts, Russ Tamblyn, Amber Tamblyn, January Lavoy, Phoebe Strole, Robin Miles, Thérèse Plummer, Dan Bittner, James Fouhey, and Michael Crouch.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I've been finished with this for hours
- By Bill on 06-29-18
By: Amber Tamblyn
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Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 400
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 346
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 348
At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
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Saguaro
- By: Carson Mell
- Narrated by: Carson Mell
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Saguaro chronicles the life of rock legend Bobby Bird as he finds himself rolled up in barbiturates, at sea with satanic cults, finding true love, selling out, and coming back. Bird may be many things - a legend in pink cotton, a living history in tattoos, the very embodiment of rock and roll - but he isn’t a bad man. At least not all the time. He made his name as a crooner, revered as a singer with soul, a soul he quickly sold without ever considering the implications.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Animal Cruelty Warning
- By AJLecter on 02-06-23
By: Carson Mell
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Chelsea Girls
- A Novel
- By: Eileen Myles
- Narrated by: Eileen Myles
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.
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5 out of 5 stars
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fascinatingly skanky
- By Megon J. Walker on 07-15-16
By: Eileen Myles
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The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 364
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 329
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Story4 out of 5 stars 328
A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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I'm the One That I Want
- By: Margaret Cho
- Narrated by: Margaret Cho
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4 out of 5 stars 77
I'm the One That I Want, based on her show of the same name, is filled with dead-on insights about the experience of being a woman with attitude, of flowing with the highs and lows of life, and of creating one's own identity and acceptance. It is every bit as hilarious, shocking, and irreverent as she is.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hilarious and deeply engrossing
- By Ling on 04-10-03
By: Margaret Cho
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Miss Fortune
- Fresh Perspectives on Having It All from Someone Who Is Not Okay
- By: Lauren Weedman
- Narrated by: Lauren Weedman
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Lauren Weedman is not okay. She's living what should be the good life in sunny Los Angeles. After a gig as a correspondent with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she scored parts in blockbuster movies, which led to memorable recurring roles on HBO's Hung and Looking. She had a loving husband and an adorable baby boy. In these comedic essays, she turns a piercingly observant, darkly funny lens on the ways her life is actually not okay.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good
- By Ajules29 on 04-02-16
By: Lauren Weedman
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Junkie Love
- By: Joe Clifford
- Narrated by: Timothy McKean
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 98
From the cow fields of Connecticut to the streets of San Francisco, Joe Clifford's Junkie Love traverses the lost highways of America, down the rocky roads of mental illness to the dead ends of addiction. Based on Clifford's own harrowing experience with drugs as a rock 'n' roll wannabe in the 1990s, the audiobook draws on the best of Kerouac and the Beats, injecting a heavy dose of pulp fiction as it threads a rollicking narrative through a doomed love triangle, lit up by the many strange characters he meets along the way.
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5 out of 5 stars
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WOW! an inside look into an junkies mind
- By TinkerMel on 05-16-17
By: Joe Clifford
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The Good Luck of Right Now
- By: Matthew Quick
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 310
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 267
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Story4 out of 5 stars 266
For 38 years, Bartholomew Neil has lived with his mother. When she gets sick and dies, he has no idea how to be on his own. His redheaded grief counselor, Wendy, says he needs to find his flock and leave the nest. But how does a man whose whole life has been grounded in his mom, Saturday Mass, and the library learn how to fly? Bartholomew thinks he's found a clue when he discovers a "Free Tibet" letter from Richard Gere hidden in his mother's underwear drawer. In her final days, Mom called him Richard - there must be a cosmic connection.
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5 out of 5 stars
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AMAZING
- By JoAnn on 02-17-14
By: Matthew Quick
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The World's Largest Man
- A Memoir
- By: Harrison Scott Key
- Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 202
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 188
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Story5 out of 5 stars 188
Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father - a hunter, a fighter, and a football coach. Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I laughed every day to and from work. Loved it!
- By KufRN on 06-06-18
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Autobiography of a Fat Bride
- True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood
- By: Laurie Notaro
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4 out of 5 stars 44
In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Hilarious
- By MissSusie66 on 05-10-12
By: Laurie Notaro
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The Undocumented Americans
- By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Narrated by: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,020
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 883
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 876
Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Raw, heartbreaking - we can do better by others
- By RapaciousReader on 04-11-20
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With or Without You
- By: Caroline Leavitt
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 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
After almost 20 years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind.
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4 out of 5 stars
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not my cup of tea
- By Grekis on 12-23-20
By: Caroline Leavitt
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Your Voice in My Head
- A Memoir
- By: Emma Forrest
- Narrated by: Emma Forrest
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 346
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 322
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Story4 out of 5 stars 320
Emma Forrest, a British journalist, was just 22 and living the fast life in New York City when she realized that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity. In a cycle of loneliness, damaging relationships, and destructive behavior, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding, and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist--a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the dangerous tide after she tried to end her life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great, quick read
- By Amazon Customer on 02-12-21
By: Emma Forrest
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Agorafabulous!
- Dispatches From My Bedroom
- By: Sara Benincasa
- Narrated by: Sara Benincasa
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 76
One of the funniest and most poignant books ever written about a mental illness, Agorafabulous! is a hilarious, raw, and unforgettable account of how a terrified young woman, literally trapped by her own imagination, evolved into a (relatively) high-functioning professional smartass. Down to earth and seriously funny, Benincasa's no-holds-barred revelations offer listeners the politically incorrect hilarity they heartily crave, yet is so often missing from your typical, weepy, and redemptive personal memoir.
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5 out of 5 stars
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More Fun than a Good Cry in a Bathroom Stall
- By Susie on 03-05-15
By: Sara Benincasa
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Tiger, Tiger
- A Memoir
- By: Margaux Fragoso
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 226
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 193
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 193
One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is 51. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child’s paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.
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3 out of 5 stars
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a weirdly loving diatribe against pervs.
- By Dane Flakeman on 05-21-11
By: Margaux Fragoso