Get Your Free Audiobook
-
The Braid
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Non-member price: $13.66
People who bought this also bought...
-
La tresse suivi d'un entretien avec l'auteure
- By: Laëtitia Colombani
- Narrated by: Laëtitia Colombani, Rebecca Marder, Estelle Vincent
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inde. Smita est une intouchable. Mariée à un chasseur de rats, elle nettoie à mains nues les latrines de son village, comme le faisait sa mère. Son rêve : voir sa fille échapper à la tradition et apprendre à lire. Sicile. Julia est ouvrière dans l'atelier de traitement de cheveux de son père, le dernier du genre à Palerme. Elle trie, lave, décolore et teint des mèches fournies par les coiffeurs de la ville. Lorsque son père est victime d'un grave accident, elle découvre que l'atelier familial est ruiné.
-
Sorrow and Bliss
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Hannah Monson
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was 14 and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.
-
-
I was 100% consumed, involved and personally reflective and affected.
- By lucy aris on 17-10-2020
-
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
- A Novel
- By: Kim Michele Richardson
- Narrated by: Katie Schorr
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble.
-
-
Captivating
- By Anonymous User on 28-11-2020
-
The Giver of Stars
- By: Jojo Moyes
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice is stifled, bored, and misunderstood. So when she meets wealthy and handsome American, Bennett Van Cleve, she is quickly swept off her feet. Marrying him and moving to America seems like a great adventure - but life as a newlywed in stuffy Baileyville, Kentucky, is not at all what she hoped for. Until, that is, she responds to a call for volunteers to start a travelling library, surprising herself by saying yes, before her husband can say no.
-
-
Magnificent story with spellbinding narrator
- By G from OZ on 24-10-2019
-
The Dutch House
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A masterpiece from the Orange Prize-winning, New York Times number one best-selling author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto: a story of love, family, sacrifice and the power of place. Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime – the unforgettable Sunday Times best seller. A story of two siblings, their childhood home and a past that they can’t let go. Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns.
-
-
Great witty narration
- By christiana O on 27-09-2019
-
American Dirt
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop. Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world. Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left. For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg. For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running.
-
-
Enjoyable
- By Anonymous User on 15-01-2021
-
La tresse suivi d'un entretien avec l'auteure
- By: Laëtitia Colombani
- Narrated by: Laëtitia Colombani, Rebecca Marder, Estelle Vincent
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inde. Smita est une intouchable. Mariée à un chasseur de rats, elle nettoie à mains nues les latrines de son village, comme le faisait sa mère. Son rêve : voir sa fille échapper à la tradition et apprendre à lire. Sicile. Julia est ouvrière dans l'atelier de traitement de cheveux de son père, le dernier du genre à Palerme. Elle trie, lave, décolore et teint des mèches fournies par les coiffeurs de la ville. Lorsque son père est victime d'un grave accident, elle découvre que l'atelier familial est ruiné.
-
Sorrow and Bliss
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Hannah Monson
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was 14 and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.
-
-
I was 100% consumed, involved and personally reflective and affected.
- By lucy aris on 17-10-2020
-
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
- A Novel
- By: Kim Michele Richardson
- Narrated by: Katie Schorr
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble.
-
-
Captivating
- By Anonymous User on 28-11-2020
-
The Giver of Stars
- By: Jojo Moyes
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice is stifled, bored, and misunderstood. So when she meets wealthy and handsome American, Bennett Van Cleve, she is quickly swept off her feet. Marrying him and moving to America seems like a great adventure - but life as a newlywed in stuffy Baileyville, Kentucky, is not at all what she hoped for. Until, that is, she responds to a call for volunteers to start a travelling library, surprising herself by saying yes, before her husband can say no.
-
-
Magnificent story with spellbinding narrator
- By G from OZ on 24-10-2019
-
The Dutch House
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A masterpiece from the Orange Prize-winning, New York Times number one best-selling author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto: a story of love, family, sacrifice and the power of place. Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime – the unforgettable Sunday Times best seller. A story of two siblings, their childhood home and a past that they can’t let go. Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns.
-
-
Great witty narration
- By christiana O on 27-09-2019
-
American Dirt
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop. Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world. Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left. For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg. For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running.
-
-
Enjoyable
- By Anonymous User on 15-01-2021
-
Migrations
- By: Charlotte McConaghy
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How far you would you go for love? Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica. As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny's life begin to unspool.
-
-
Excellent.
- By Kindle Customer on 12-08-2020
-
Goodbye, Vitamin
- By: Rachel Khong
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hello, ageing parents. Hello, dementia. Goodbye, vitamin.... Ruth is 30, and her life is falling apart: she and her fiancé are moving house, but he's moving out to live with another woman; her career is going nowhere; and then she learns that her father, a history professor beloved by his students, has Alzheimer's. At Christmas her mother begs her to stay on and help. For a year.
-
-
Family Ties
- By Anonymous User on 06-08-2018
-
Lady in Waiting
- My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
- By: Anne Glenconner
- Narrated by: Anne Glenconner
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anne Glenconner reveals the real events behind The Crown as well as her own life of drama, tragedy and courage, with the wonderful wit and extraordinary resilience which define her. Anne Glenconner has been close to the Royal Family since childhood. Eldest child of the 5th Earl of Leicester, she was, as a daughter, described as 'the greatest disappointment' by her family as she was unable to inherit. Her childhood home, Holkham Hall, is one of the grandest estates in England. Bordering Sandringham, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were frequent playmates.
-
-
Enchanted
- By MEW on 18-11-2019
-
Caste
- The Lies That Divide Us
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beyond race or class, our lives are defined by a powerful, unspoken system of divisions. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson gives an astounding portrait of this hidden phenomenon. Linking America, India and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson reveals how our world has been shaped by caste - and how its rigid, arbitrary hierarchies still divide us today. With clear-sighted rigour, Wilkerson unearths the eight pillars that connect caste systems across civilisations and demonstrates how our own era of intensifying conflict and upheaval has arisen as a consequence of caste.
-
-
Disappointed by the clumsy presentation.
- By Anu on 24-08-2020
-
The Flight Girls
- By: Noelle Salazar
- Narrated by: Stephanie Cannon
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Audrey Coltrane has always wanted to fly. It is why she implored her father to teach her at the little airfield back home in Texas. It is why she signed up to train military pilots in Hawaii when the war in Europe began. And it is why she insists she is not interested in any dream-derailing romantic involvements, even with the disarming Lieutenant James Hart, who fast becomes a friend as dear as the women she flies with. Then one fateful day, she gets caught in the air over Pearl Harbour just as the bombs begin to fall, and suddenly, nowhere feels safe.
-
Have You Seen Luis Velez?
- By: Catherine Ryan Hyde
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn’t belong. Not with his mother’s new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father’s wife. Not at school, where he’s an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez?
-
-
Beautiful story
- By Christine on 29-07-2020
-
Chanson douce
- By: Leïla Slimani
- Narrated by: Clotilde Courau
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lorsque Myriam, mère de deux jeunes enfants, décide malgré les réticences de son mari de reprendre son activité au sein d'un cabinet d'avocats, le couple se met à la recherche d'une nounou. Après un casting sévère, ils engagent Louise, qui conquiert très vite l'affection des enfants et occupe progressivement une place centrale dans le foyer. Peu à peu le piège de la dépendance mutuelle va se refermer, jusqu'au drame.
-
Hidden Valley Road
- By: Robert Kolker
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the air force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins - aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony - and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse.
-
-
Absolutely brilliant
- By chickybabe3 on 14-02-2021
-
Braiding Sweetgrass
- Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.
-
-
Most important & beautiful book I’ve ever read
- By Anonymous User on 28-07-2020
-
The Splendid and the Vile
- A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Matt Addis
- Length: 20 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next 12 months, the Nazis would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons and destroying two million homes. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson gives a new and brilliantly cinematic account of how Britain’s most iconic leader set about unifying the nation at its most vulnerable moment, and teaching ‘the art of being fearless’.
-
-
Fabulous
- By elizabeth b. on 12-07-2020
-
Where the Crawdads Sing
- By: Delia Owens
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.
-
-
Wonderful core story, but ultimately disappointing
- By Melle on 06-02-2020
-
Orange Is the New Black
- My Time in a Women's Prison
- By: Piper Kerman
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her career, live-in boyfriend and loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the rebellious young woman who got mixed up with drug runners and delivered a suitcase of drug money to Europe over a decade ago. But when she least expects it, her reckless past catches up with her; convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at an infamous women's prison in Connecticut, Piper becomes inmate #11187-424.
-
-
very good
- By toni on 16-03-2015
Publisher's Summary
The best-selling phenomenon from France.
Smita, Giulia, Sarah: three lives, three continents, three women with nothing in common but nevertheless bound by a rare expression of courage...like three strands in a braid. Through the story of one woman’s hair, three women’s destinies are drawn together.
India. Smita is an untouchable, married to a ‘rat hunter’, her job to clean with her bare hands the village latrines, just like her mother before her. Her dream is to see her daughter escape this same fate and learn to read. When this hope is shattered, she decides to run away with the child, despite her husband’s warnings, sacrificing what is most precious to her: her hair.
Sicily. Giulia is a worker in her father’s wig workshop, the last of its kind in Palermo. She classifies, washes, bleaches and dyes the hair provided by the city’s hairdressers. When her father is the victim of a serious accident, she quickly discovers the family company is bankrupt.
Canada. Sarah is a reputed lawyer. As a twice-divorced mother of three children, she ploughs through cases at breakneck speed. Just as she is about to be promoted, she learns she has breast cancer. Her seemingly perfect existence begins to show its cracks.... But this is only if one ignores the incredible lust for life that keeps her going.
Laetitia Colombani’s The Braid is the powerfully moving story of three women’s courage in the face of adversity.
Critic Reviews
"We truly loved reading this beautiful, simple novel in one sitting." (ELLE)
More from the same
What listeners say about The Braid
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Anonymous User
- 13-11-2020
Clever portraits of three women
Intertwined stories of very different lifes. Vivid descriptions of women experiencing profound change. Outstanding reading performance.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Amazon Customer
- 29-09-2020
Beautiful story
This is a beautiful story of humanity and the strength of women. I loved it.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Laura Alboni
- 15-04-2020
A real treat and a page turner - recommended read
As soon as I started reading it I fell in love with Smita's strength and perseverance, Giulia's love and courage and Sarah's determination. Three women that even in the most difficult situations don't give up. I highly recommend this book about women's inner strength and willpower.
16 Best Audiobooks by Aboriginal Authors
Across genres, there’s no shortage of brilliant titles from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers of Australia.



25 Best Celebrity Audiobooks
It’s always a pleasant surprise to pick up a familiar story and find an unexpected famous friend in the narrator’s booth.



Best Audiobooks of 2020
We've crunched the numbers, heard from our listeners and gotten expert opinions to round up the best listens of 2020.


