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The Pattern in the Carpet
- Narrated by: Diana Bishop
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
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The Pattern in the Carpet
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Publisher's summary
In The Pattern in the Carpet, Margaret Drabble tells the history of the jigsaw, a uniquely British form of meditation, from its earliest incarnation as a teaching tool to the extraordinary variety of cut-outs that have continued to amuse children and adults until the present.
Woven through Drabble's account are intimate memories of her aunt Phyllis - her childhood visits to her aunt's Lincolnshire house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first visit to London together, the books they read and, above all, the jigsaws that they completed.
A unique and personal history of remembrance and growing older - and how we rearrange objects into new patterns both to make sense of our past and to ornament our present.
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-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just a stunning piece
- By Alfie on 08-07-22
By: Virginia Woolf
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Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4 out of 5 stars 52
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
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3 out of 5 stars
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over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
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Alice Behind Wonderland
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4 out of 5 stars 87
On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London. Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image - as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation - as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not Long Enough
- By thefrogman on 06-18-12
By: Simon Winchester
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The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 135
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Story4 out of 5 stars 124
Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
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J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Making of a Legend
- By: Colin Duriez
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
J.R.R. Tolkien's creations, imagination, and characters captured the attention of millions of readers. But who was the man who dreamt up the intricate languages and perfectly crafted world of Middle-earth? Tolkien had a difficult life, for many years: orphaned and poor, his guardian forbade him to communicate with the woman he had fallen in love with, and he went through the horrors of the First World War. An intensely private and brilliant scholar, he spent over 50 years working on the languages, history, peoples, and geography of Middle-earth,
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful
- By Luke B. on 10-27-20
By: Colin Duriez
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The Housekeeper's Tale
- The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House
- By: Tessa Boase
- Narrated by: Tessa Boase
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 237
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4 out of 5 stars 213
The Housekeeper's Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Using secret diaries, unpublished letters, and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Utterly intriguing
- By Pamela Jane on 09-14-17
By: Tessa Boase
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Wait for Me!
- Memoirs
- By: Deborah Mitford Duchess of Devonshire
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to the second son of the Duke of Devonshire.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The last of the Mitford Sisters
- By Irene on 01-11-11
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Labyrinths
- Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
- By: Catrine Clay
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 31
Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Carl plays center stage
- By Sparrowhawk on 12-23-16
By: Catrine Clay
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Istanbul
- Memories and the City
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
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Story4 out of 5 stars 178
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Terrible pronunciation
- By K. Jaynes on 02-25-18
By: Orhan Pamuk
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A Woman's Story
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Upon her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to “capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris.” She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A stiff and uninteresting story
- By Ellen on 11-19-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
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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 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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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Foursome
- Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury
- By: Carolyn Burke
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
New York, 1921: Acclaimed photographer Alfred Stieglitz celebrates the success of his latest exhibition - the centerpiece, a series of nude portraits of his soon-to-be wife, the young Georgia O'Keeffe. The exhibit acts as a turning point for the painter poised to make her entrance into the art scene. There, she meets Rebecca Salsbury, the fiancé of Stieglitz’s protégé, Paul Strand, marking the start of a bond between the couples that will last more than a decade and reverberate throughout their lives.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A competent account of four interesting lives
- By Sil A. on 11-21-20
By: Carolyn Burke
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Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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Remembering Shanghai
- A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
- By: Isabel Sun Chao, Claire Chao
- Narrated by: Rachel Yong, Claire Chao, Isabel Sun Chao
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations, from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.
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5 out of 5 stars
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touching stories of resilience and family
- By Rodger on 01-17-21
By: Isabel Sun Chao, and others
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Time Pieces
- A Dublin Memoir
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived.
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5 out of 5 stars
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‘loved it!
- By SandyK on 02-24-24
By: John Banville