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The Poisonwood Bible
- Narrated by: Dean Robertson
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
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Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
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Masterpiece and superbly read.
- By Allie C on 31-01-2017
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The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
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Plea for Cutting For Stone!
- By karenf on 14-05-2023
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Prodigal Summer
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches them from an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and her solitary life.
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Coyote
- By Anonymous User on 13-07-2023
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The Persimmon Tree
- By: Bryce Courtenay
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 27 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Persimmon Tree opens in Indonesia in 1942 on the cusp of Japanese invasion and the evacuation of Batavia (Jakarta) by the Dutch. Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Duncan is on holiday there, in pursuit of an exotic butterfly known as the Magpie Crow. It's an uncertain, dangerous time to be in Indonesia, and Nick's options of getting out are fast dwindling. Amidst the fear and chaos he falls in love with Anna, the beautiful daughter of a Dutch acquaintance, and she nicknames him 'Mr Butterfly'.
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Brilliant
- By ValleyGirl on 16-03-2018
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 27 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.
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Out-standing novel!
- By Wendy on 18-03-2016
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Love in the Time of Cholera
- By: Gabriel García Márquez
- Narrated by: Armando Durán
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds two people's lives together for more than half a century. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career, he whiles away the years in 622 affairs - yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral....
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magnificent
- By Graham B on 12-12-2018
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Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
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Masterpiece and superbly read.
- By Allie C on 31-01-2017
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The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
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Plea for Cutting For Stone!
- By karenf on 14-05-2023
-
Prodigal Summer
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches them from an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and her solitary life.
-
-
Coyote
- By Anonymous User on 13-07-2023
-
The Persimmon Tree
- By: Bryce Courtenay
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 27 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Persimmon Tree opens in Indonesia in 1942 on the cusp of Japanese invasion and the evacuation of Batavia (Jakarta) by the Dutch. Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Duncan is on holiday there, in pursuit of an exotic butterfly known as the Magpie Crow. It's an uncertain, dangerous time to be in Indonesia, and Nick's options of getting out are fast dwindling. Amidst the fear and chaos he falls in love with Anna, the beautiful daughter of a Dutch acquaintance, and she nicknames him 'Mr Butterfly'.
-
-
Brilliant
- By ValleyGirl on 16-03-2018
-
A Prayer for Owen Meany
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 27 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.
-
-
Out-standing novel!
- By Wendy on 18-03-2016
-
Love in the Time of Cholera
- By: Gabriel García Márquez
- Narrated by: Armando Durán
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds two people's lives together for more than half a century. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career, he whiles away the years in 622 affairs - yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral....
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magnificent
- By Graham B on 12-12-2018
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Witness
- By: Louise Milligan
- Narrated by: Louise Milligan
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of Cardinal comes a searing examination of the power imbalance in our legal system—where exposing the truth is never guaranteed and, for victims, justice is often elusive. A masterful and deeply troubling expose, Witness is the culmination of five years' research for award-winning investigative journalist Louise Milligan.
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Excellent
- By Karyn on 29-02-2024
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The Master and Margarita
- By: Mikhail Bulgakov
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The Devil comes to Moscow, but he isn't all bad; Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don't burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world's great novels.
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Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Read it!
- By jdk on 25-07-2016
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When God Was a Rabbit
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Young Elly's world is shaped by those who inhabit it: her loving but maddeningly distractible parents; a best friend who smells of chips and knows exotic words like 'slag'; an ageing fop who tapdances his way into her home, a Shirley Bassey impersonator who trails close behind; lastly, of course, a rabbit called God. In a childhood peppered with moments both ordinary and extraordinary, Elly's one constant is her brother Joe. Twenty years on, Elly and Joe are fully grown and as close as they ever were. Until, that is, an earth-shattering event that threatens to destroy their bond for ever.
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Disappointing
- By toni jackson on 07-01-2024
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Watership Down
- By: Richard Adams
- Narrated by: Peter Capaldi
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Fiver could sense danger. Something terrible was going to happen to the warren; he felt sure of it. They had to leave immediately. So begins a long and perilous journey of survival for a small band of rabbits. As the rabbits skirt danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band, its humorous characters, and its compelling culture, complete with its own folk history and mythos. Fiver’s vision finally leads them to Watership Down, an upland meadow. But here they face their most difficult challenges of all.
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17 hrs and 31 mins of pleasure
- By Alison on 02-07-2019
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David Attenborough's Life Stories
- The Complete Collection
- By: David Attenborough
- Narrated by: David Attenborough
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Original Recording
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One of the nation's most popular presenters, Sir David examines 40 marvels of the natural world from his extraordinary and pioneering experiences. What was Sir David's first pet? Which animal would he most like to be? How did he track down a giant earthworm? Why does he respect rats? And what did he do when confronted by a 10-foot-long reptile? His enthusiasm is as infectious as ever and conveys a unique fascination on topics as diverse as the sloth, monstrous flowers, the platypus, dragons, the fire salamander, the coelacanth, the dodo, bird's-nest soup and the large blue butterfly.
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Perfection
- By Anonymous User on 20-12-2022
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Brother Cadfael
- A BBC Radio Collection of Three Full-Cast Dramatisations
- By: Ellis Peters
- Narrated by: Douglas Hodge, full cast, Michael Hordern, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Original Recording
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A onetime Crusader turned Benedictine monk, Brother Cadfael is a most unusual detective. Living a quiet life as a monastery herbalist, he spends his days ministering to his brothers using the medical skills he acquired in the Holy Lands—but his worldly knowledge and wide experience of human nature are frequently called upon when there is a murder to solve....
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Brother Cadfael - brilliant!
- By Pauline on 09-02-2021
Publisher's Summary
“A powerful new epic... [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel establishes Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.
Critic Reviews
"Haunting...A novel of character, a narrative shaped by keen-eyed women." (New York Times Book Review)
"Beautifully written....Kingsolver's tale of domestic tragedy is more than just a well-told yarn.. Played out against the bloody backdrop of political struggles in Congo that continue to this day, it is also particularly timely." (People)
"The book's sheer enjoyability is given depth by Kingsolver's insight and compassion for Congo, including its people, and their language and sayings." (Boston Globe)
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What listeners say about The Poisonwood Bible
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Philip
- 18-09-2016
You will be mesmerised and scandalised and find yourself exultant and indignant by turns
I have found a new author to add to my list of favoured writers. In a novel that resonates with my own family's missionary history not in the Congo but in Australia's Arnhemland, Kingsolver writes a powerful story of the journey of a family and the nations created by European colonisers, monarchs, politicians and the world's new imperial power, the US. Kingsolver's writing transcends my own links to the Price family's story to pen an intricate, intriguing narrative of life experience that sees privation, tragedy, redemption. Kingsolver's five female voices are crafted with insight and the tools of a sculptor and, in the voicing of the audiobook version of the novel, Dean Robertson is ultimately convincing. Kingsolver writes simply and with simplicity but not simplistically. Like that amazing literary work of the early 17th C, the King James Bible, the author uses a colourful pallet of just a few of the many words available in English to write with transcendent narrative capacity. Read it to yourself or let Robertson read it to you; you will be mesmerised and scandalised and find yourself exultant and indignant by turns. My judgement of a truly good book is that, having been read once it must be re-read. This is such a book. Of an author, the same; I look forward with eager anticipation to my next Kingsolver novel.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 22-07-2019
A truly remarkable book
This book is exceptional and the narration supurb. A fascinating story of an American Baptist missionary family in the Congo during the political upheaval in the region during the 60's. Written mostly through the eyes of the children, and sometimes of the mother, this book is thought provoking, funny and wise. Bravo!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sherry McCourt
- 10-03-2019
Loved it
Never having read Barbara Kingsolver before, I found her to be a literary treasure and will now go searching for her other books. Such a treat to learn something, be made to think and to be entertained, all in one book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- KateS
- 19-12-2014
Stunning
This is an extraordinary story and the use of the first person from all the female characters point's of view works extremely well. It is a history lesson in depth and with heart. Barbara Kingsolver's writing is exquisitely beautiful. Her research must be extensive. Cannot recommend it enough.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sheepish
- 12-02-2023
An extraordinary story
Th narrator was completely convincing as she switched to voice each character and their southern accents. This book is a fascinating look at the true & tragic history of the Congo through the eyes of a mother and her daughters from Atlanta, Georgia with their religious zealot husband and father. We stay with this family and the Congo for so 30 or 40 years. A must read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Leapfrog
- 19-05-2020
Worth the wait
By worth the wait, I mean worth the challenge you may encounter getting stuck into the story and narration. With a few characters to get to know, distinguishing between them is tricky in the audio at first, but the character development is beautiful. The first half of the book seemed too slow for audio but by the end it was racing by.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Gai Stern
- 20-09-2019
Engrossing and beautifully written
Loved it! Couldn't stop listening as I was totally immersed. Brilliant book. Thank you.
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- Lynlee
- 25-01-2019
A unique book that sticks
It’s not a page turner BUT it is a great slow burn. It’s an easy but deceptively deep read. Great characters, intriguing settings, solid spirit in the story. I learnt lots about a part of history I’m not sure I even knew existed until this book.
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- Pep
- 08-01-2019
Loved this beautiful book
Loved this book - my first Barbara Kingsolver book. Beautifully written and read, a poignant story with recent history of the Congo as a background and protagonist. Moving, vibrant, and a cracker of a tale. Excellent characters.
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- Vanessa
- 17-04-2018
an unforgettable story
Wow this has to be the best book I've read in the last year. The characters are compelling, the subjects so complex. I felt it was a very "mature" book in that the issues were grappled with for a long time before the book was written. I don't know much about this history of Zaire or any African nation, but it seemed very well researched. Just took me into a world that I knew nothing about. I loved the words, so many arresting phrases, phrases that I want to remember. It's tricky with the audio version because you can't underline them. the ones that come to mind are the palendrome "Eros eyesore" and "there are more words in the world than yes or no".
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