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The Centaur
- Narrated by: John MacDonald
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
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The Centaur
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Publisher's summary
Winner of the National Book Award and the Prix Du Meilleur Livre Étranger
The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell's 15-year-old son, Peter. Brilliantly conflating the author's remembered past with tales from Greek mythology, John Updike translates Chiron's agonized search for relief into the incidents and accidents of three winter days spent in rural Pennsylvania in 1947. The result, said the judges of the National Book Award, is "a courageous and brilliant account of a conflict in gifts between an inarticulate American father and his highly articulate son".
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-
1 out of 5 stars
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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The Iron Dragon's Daughter
- By: Michael Swanwick
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
Named a New York Times notable book of 1994, The Iron Dragon's Daughter tells the heartrending story of a changeling child who is kidnapped to a realm of malls and machines and enslaved in a vast, infernal factory. Ultimately, she escapes and attempts to educate herself about this alien world, while being tormented by visions of the life she was denied.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Inconsistent story and makes for a poor experience
- By Martin Smith on 07-10-15
By: Michael Swanwick
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Carrie
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7,621
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,814
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,794
An unpopular teenage girl, whose mother is a religious fanatic, is tormented and teased to the breaking point by her more popular schoolmates. She uses her hidden telekinetic powers to inflict a terrifying revenge.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best of Stephen Kings books, and to think he a
- By Angelia Chisolm on 09-26-12
By: Stephen King
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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 117
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Story4 out of 5 stars 103
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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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 279
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 249
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Story4 out of 5 stars 250
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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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 420
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 381
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Story4 out of 5 stars 380
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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Sula
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,021
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,653
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,649
Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good against evil and a riotous story to boot
- By Karen on 04-11-11
By: Toni Morrison
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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
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 357
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4 out of 5 stars 216
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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4 out of 5 stars
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Blue Guitar
- A Novel
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: Gerry O'Brien
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea and Ancient Light, a new novel - at once trenchant, witty, and shattering - about the intricacies of artistic creation and theft, and about the ways in which we learn to possess one another and to hold on to ourselves. Equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, our narrator, Oliver Otway Orme, is a painter of some renown and a petty thief who does not steal for profit and has never before been caught.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Masterful
- By Amazon customer on 11-25-15
By: John Banville
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The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20,011
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 13,858
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 13,864
Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
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The Boy Who Drew Monsters
- By: Keith Donohue
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 192
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 180
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 179
Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, 10-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire.
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3 out of 5 stars
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troubled boy, troubled waters
- By Debra B on 10-29-14
By: Keith Donohue
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Memphis
- A Novel
- By: Tara M. Stringfellow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray, Adenrele Ojo, Tara Stringfellow
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 774
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 688
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 687
Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awful narrator
- By Rachael edwards on 06-07-22
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,534
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,358
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,354
For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 192
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 135
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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What listeners say about The Centaur
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- cjh
- 03-03-20
Narrator eats words
It might be cute to have a regional accent, but it is not so easy to understand this narrator. Just listen to the first sentence of the book--I had to listen to it three times to understand it
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- LloydWilliams
- 02-15-18
Father was toxic waste...
... he tainted everything in his path. There are too many great books to waste your time reading this. A failed experiment at best.
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