- Classics (7,512)
- Historical Fiction (17,053)
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Best Sellers
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Love's Executioner
- By: Irvin D. Yalom
- Narrated by: C.M. Carlson
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The collection of 10 absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter....
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Wonderful book - one quibble about recording
- By Anonymous User on 04-07-19
By: Irvin D. Yalom
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Letters to a Young Contrarian
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the book that he was born to write, provocateur and best-selling author Christopher Hitchens inspires future generations of radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, angry young (wo)men, and dissidents....
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enjoyed this
- By Leo on 27-06-21
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Alan Bennett: Untold Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 10 hrs
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Funny, thoughtful, and fascinating, this wonderful series of essays and stories read by the author offers an extraordinary journey into an exceptional career of an award-winning writer....
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Liked
- By Janie on 18-02-23
By: Alan Bennett
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Cultural Amnesia
- Notes in the Margin of My Time
- By: Clive James
- Narrated by: Clive James
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An almanac combining a survey of modern culture with an index of who-was-who and what-was-what, Cultural Amnesia is a unique take on the places and faces that shaped the 20th century....
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Another great clearing in the jungle from CJ
- By Matt on 17-05-08
By: Clive James
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Under the Duvet
- By: Marian Keyes
- Narrated by: Marian Keyes
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Many think that Marian leads a glitzy life of limos, television, and showbiz parties - but she would argue that she spends the majority of her life writing alone, wearing her PJs....
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easy book to dip in and out off
- By Leona on 14-04-13
By: Marian Keyes
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Orwell: The Essays
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A wide-ranging selection of George Orwell's essays, written in the clear-eyed, passionate and uncompromising style that has earned him a reputation as one of Britain's greatest writers....
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This is writing
- By tony on 03-11-22
By: George Orwell
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Love's Executioner
- By: Irvin D. Yalom
- Narrated by: C.M. Carlson
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The collection of 10 absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter....
-
-
Wonderful book - one quibble about recording
- By Anonymous User on 04-07-19
By: Irvin D. Yalom
-
Letters to a Young Contrarian
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the book that he was born to write, provocateur and best-selling author Christopher Hitchens inspires future generations of radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, angry young (wo)men, and dissidents....
-
-
enjoyed this
- By Leo on 27-06-21
-
Alan Bennett: Untold Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 10 hrs
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Funny, thoughtful, and fascinating, this wonderful series of essays and stories read by the author offers an extraordinary journey into an exceptional career of an award-winning writer....
-
-
Liked
- By Janie on 18-02-23
By: Alan Bennett
-
Cultural Amnesia
- Notes in the Margin of My Time
- By: Clive James
- Narrated by: Clive James
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An almanac combining a survey of modern culture with an index of who-was-who and what-was-what, Cultural Amnesia is a unique take on the places and faces that shaped the 20th century....
-
-
Another great clearing in the jungle from CJ
- By Matt on 17-05-08
By: Clive James
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Under the Duvet
- By: Marian Keyes
- Narrated by: Marian Keyes
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many think that Marian leads a glitzy life of limos, television, and showbiz parties - but she would argue that she spends the majority of her life writing alone, wearing her PJs....
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easy book to dip in and out off
- By Leona on 14-04-13
By: Marian Keyes
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Orwell: The Essays
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wide-ranging selection of George Orwell's essays, written in the clear-eyed, passionate and uncompromising style that has earned him a reputation as one of Britain's greatest writers....
-
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This is writing
- By tony on 03-11-22
By: George Orwell
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The Empathy Exams
- Essays
- By: Leslie Jamison
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions....
By: Leslie Jamison
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Bruce Chatwin: A BBC Radio Collection
- In Patagonia & more
- By: Bruce Chatwin
- Narrated by: Russell Tovey, Ian Hogg, Ioan Meredith, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Author and adventurer Bruce Chatwin was one of the 20th Century’s most charismatic writers. Included in this collection are full-cast dramas and readings from the giant of travel writing – plus a bonus documentary....
By: Bruce Chatwin
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United States: Essays 1952-1992
- By: Gore Vidal
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 60 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Gore Vidal’s reputation as America’s finest essayist is an enduring one. This collection, chosen by the author from 40 years of work, contains about two-thirds of what he published in various magazines and journals....
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What is better than Gore Vidal
- By Pen Name on 29-08-23
By: Gore Vidal
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The Alan Clark Diaries
- In Power 1983-1992
- By: Alan Clark
- Narrated by: Alan Clark
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This was Alan Clark’s first volume of diaries and the only one that he recorded....
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Just wonderful
- By Joe Jones on 13-04-21
By: Alan Clark
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Tell Me the Truth About Love
- 13 Tales from Couples Therapy
- By: Susanna Abse
- Narrated by: Susanna Abse
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Drawing on more than 30 years of therapeutic encounters with people facing hurdles in their love lives, former chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council Susanna Abse takes us deep inside one of the most fascinating realms there is: other people's relationships....
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Fairly interesting, though the title is misleading
- By David M Sumner-Smith on 03-10-22
By: Susanna Abse
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The Art of Dying
- Writings, 2019-2022
- By: Peter Schjeldahl, Steve Martin - foreword by, Jarrett Earnest - introduction by
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker’s art critic and the leading art writer of his generation, published his eye-opening autobiographical essay, “The Art of Dying,” in December 2019, he reported that he had lung cancer and had been given six months of life.
By: Peter Schjeldahl, and others
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On the Genealogy of Morals
- A Polemic
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Duncan Steen
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche furthers his pursuit of a clarity that is less tainted by imposed prejudices....
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Should be required reading for maturing adults
- By Nze kkuc akabusi on 20-04-19
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Themes and Variations
- An Essay
- By: David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris
- Length: 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this surprising essay, international bestselling humor writer David Sedaris shares the rewards of a book tour and his devoted readers’ worst-kept secrets....
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Hilarious and thought provoking....
- By Amazon Customer on 14-08-20
By: David Sedaris
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I Like to Watch
- Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution
- By: Emily Nussbaum
- Narrated by: Emily Nussbaum
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From her creation of the “Approval Matrix” in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize–winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has argued for a new way of looking at TV....
By: Emily Nussbaum
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The Periodic Table
- By: Primo Levi
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi is an impassioned response to the Holocaust: Consisting of 21 short stories, each possessing the name of a chemical element....
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Returno to Torino
- By Welsh Mafia on 24-06-16
By: Primo Levi
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In Praise of Shadows
- By: Junichiro Tanizaki
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Praise of Shadows is an eloquent tribute to the austere beauty of traditional Japanese aesthetics....
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outdated, racist and sexist views and comments.
- By Dylan E. on 26-11-18
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The Time of Our Lives
- Collected Writings
- By: Peggy Noonan
- Narrated by: Betsy Foldes Meiman, Rena-Marie Villano, Peggy Noonan
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Annotated and analyzed throughout, Peggy expands a lifetime of wonderful writing into an astute examination of American life....
By: Peggy Noonan
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How to Be Alone
- If You Want to, and Even If You Don't
- By: Lane Moore
- Narrated by: Lane Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
How to Be Alone is a must-listen for anyone whose childhood still feels unresolved, who spends more time pretending to have friends online than feeling close to anyone in real life, who tries to have genuine, deep conversations in a roomful of people who'd rather you not....
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She really doesn’t like dudes
- By Sveinbjörn Pálsson on 17-09-20
By: Lane Moore
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The Friedrich Nietzsche Collection
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Ellis Freeman
- Length: 51 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) has influenced philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Oswald Spengler, George Grant, Emil Cioran, Albert Camus, Ayn Rand, Jacques Derrida, Leo Strauss, Max Scheler, Michel Foucault, and Bernard Williams....
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Dad Is Fat
- By: Jim Gaffigan
- Narrated by: Jim Gaffigan
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Dad is Fat, stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, who’s best known for his legendary riffs on Hot Pockets, bacon, manatees, and McDonald's, expresses all the joys and horrors of life with five young children....
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Excellent
- By Amazon Customer on 14-09-21
By: Jim Gaffigan
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Dispatches from the Diaspora
- From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter
- By: Gary Younge
- Narrated by: David Monteith
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For the last three decades Gary Younge has had a ringside seat during the biggest events and with the most significant personalities to impact the black diaspora. He has witnessed how much change is possible and the power of systems to thwart those aspirations....
By: Gary Younge
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The Inconvenient Indian
- A Curious Account of Native People in North America
- By: Thomas King
- Narrated by: Lorne Cardinal
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Inconvenient Indian is at once a “history” and the complete subversion of a history - in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be “Indian” in North America....
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great!
- By D. D. Pianta on 05-11-19
By: Thomas King
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Flush
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Prunella Scales
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett....
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Voiceover skips entire parts of the book at a time
- By Sylva on 19-03-24
By: Virginia Woolf
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On the Origin of Species
- By: Charles Darwin
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals....
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Something Old made Something New
- By Tim on 05-03-11
By: Charles Darwin
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Miami
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Miami is not just a portrait of a city, but a masterly study of immigration and exile, passion, hypocrisy, and political violence....
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Fascinating book but some narration issues
- By "paraxylene" on 27-12-21
By: Joan Didion
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On Connection
- By: Kae Tempest
- Narrated by: Kae Tempest
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Honest, tender and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is a call to arms that speaks to a universal yet intimate truth....
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Impassioned brilliance- this is the beautiful thing
- By Pixieface on 17-10-20
By: Kae Tempest
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The Trials of Oscar Wilde
- By: Gyles Brandreth
- Narrated by: Martin Jarvis
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This compelling dramatic recreation has been carefully compiled from the original trial transcripts....
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Astonishing performance by Martin Jarvis
- By Nicholas on 26-11-10
By: Gyles Brandreth
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Politics and the English Language: And Other Essays
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Jackson Moss
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Biographer Michael Shelden called Orwell’s Politics and the English Language “his most important essay on style”....
By: George Orwell
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La Femme indépendante
- By: Simone de Beauvoir
- Narrated by: Florence Viala
- Length: 3 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"La femme a toujours été, sinon l'esclave de l'homme, du moins sa vassale ; les deux sexes ne se sont jamais partagé le monde à égalité..."
New Releases
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The Art of Dying
- Writings, 2019-2022
- By: Peter Schjeldahl, Steve Martin - foreword by, Jarrett Earnest - introduction by
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker’s art critic and the leading art writer of his generation, published his eye-opening autobiographical essay, “The Art of Dying,” in December 2019, he reported that he had lung cancer and had been given six months of life. Fortunately, his treatment was showing some improvement, and so, he wrote, “These extra months are a luxury that I hope to have put to good use.”
By: Peter Schjeldahl, and others
-
Magical/Realism
- Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
- By: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
- Narrated by: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality. In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all.
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A Black Girl in the Middle
- Essays on (Allegedly) Figuring It All Out
- By: Shenequa Golding
- Narrated by: Aure Nash
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In A Black Girl in the Middle, a timely, compelling, and blazingly honest essay collection, Shenequa Golding holds up her magnifying glass to both her own experiences and those of young Black women everywhere. With her trademark wit and originality, Shenequa covers identity-searching themes of white supremacy, feminism, misogyny, love, sex and heartbreak. But this isn't just a book about Black women's trauma, it is also a book that embraces and celebrates the things that make Black women different.
By: Shenequa Golding
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Metamorphoses
- In Search of Franz Kafka
- By: Karolina Watroba
- Narrated by: Deborah Balm
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 2024, exactly one hundred years after his death at the age of 40, readers and listeners all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books filled with mysterious courts and monstrous insects. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka? Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist ever elected as a Fellow of Oxford's All Souls College, will tell Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time and space, travelling from the Prague of Kafka's birth through the work of contemporary writers in East Asia.
By: Karolina Watroba
-
Small Victories
- Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace
- By: Anne Lamott
- Narrated by: Anne Lamott
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Anne Lamott writes about faith, family, and community in essays that are both wise and irreverent. It's an approach that has become her trademark. Now in Small Victories, Lamott offers a new message of hope that celebrates the triumph of light over the darkness in our lives. Our victories over hardship and pain may seem small, she writes, but they change us--our perceptions, our perspectives, and our lives.
By: Anne Lamott
-
Mean Boys
- A Personal History
- By: Geoffrey Mak
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Mak
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this pyrotechnic memoir-in-essays, Mak ranges widely over our landscape of paranoia, crisis, and frenetic, clickable consumption. He grants listeners an inside pass to the spaces where culture was made and unmade over the past decade, from the antiseptic glare of white-walled galleries to the darkest corners of Berlin techno clubs. As the gay son of an evangelical minister, Mak fled to those spaces, hoping to join a global, influential elite. But when calamity struck, it forced Mak to confront the costs of mistaking status for belonging.
By: Geoffrey Mak
-
The Art of Dying
- Writings, 2019-2022
- By: Peter Schjeldahl, Steve Martin - foreword by, Jarrett Earnest - introduction by
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker’s art critic and the leading art writer of his generation, published his eye-opening autobiographical essay, “The Art of Dying,” in December 2019, he reported that he had lung cancer and had been given six months of life. Fortunately, his treatment was showing some improvement, and so, he wrote, “These extra months are a luxury that I hope to have put to good use.”
By: Peter Schjeldahl, and others
-
Magical/Realism
- Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
- By: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
- Narrated by: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality. In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all.
-
A Black Girl in the Middle
- Essays on (Allegedly) Figuring It All Out
- By: Shenequa Golding
- Narrated by: Aure Nash
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In A Black Girl in the Middle, a timely, compelling, and blazingly honest essay collection, Shenequa Golding holds up her magnifying glass to both her own experiences and those of young Black women everywhere. With her trademark wit and originality, Shenequa covers identity-searching themes of white supremacy, feminism, misogyny, love, sex and heartbreak. But this isn't just a book about Black women's trauma, it is also a book that embraces and celebrates the things that make Black women different.
By: Shenequa Golding
-
Metamorphoses
- In Search of Franz Kafka
- By: Karolina Watroba
- Narrated by: Deborah Balm
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2024, exactly one hundred years after his death at the age of 40, readers and listeners all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books filled with mysterious courts and monstrous insects. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka? Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist ever elected as a Fellow of Oxford's All Souls College, will tell Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time and space, travelling from the Prague of Kafka's birth through the work of contemporary writers in East Asia.
By: Karolina Watroba
-
Small Victories
- Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace
- By: Anne Lamott
- Narrated by: Anne Lamott
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anne Lamott writes about faith, family, and community in essays that are both wise and irreverent. It's an approach that has become her trademark. Now in Small Victories, Lamott offers a new message of hope that celebrates the triumph of light over the darkness in our lives. Our victories over hardship and pain may seem small, she writes, but they change us--our perceptions, our perspectives, and our lives.
By: Anne Lamott
-
Mean Boys
- A Personal History
- By: Geoffrey Mak
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Mak
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this pyrotechnic memoir-in-essays, Mak ranges widely over our landscape of paranoia, crisis, and frenetic, clickable consumption. He grants listeners an inside pass to the spaces where culture was made and unmade over the past decade, from the antiseptic glare of white-walled galleries to the darkest corners of Berlin techno clubs. As the gay son of an evangelical minister, Mak fled to those spaces, hoping to join a global, influential elite. But when calamity struck, it forced Mak to confront the costs of mistaking status for belonging.
By: Geoffrey Mak
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Bite by Bite
- Nourishments and Jamborees
- By: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Narrated by: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances—a subtext or layering, a flavor tinged with joy, shame, exuberance, grief, desire, or nostalgia. Nezhukmatathil restores our astonishment and wonder about food through her encounters with a range of foods and food traditions. From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities and explores the boundaries between heritage and memory.
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Excitable Boy
- Essays on Risk
- By: Dominic Gordon
- Narrated by: Dominic Gordon, Kyle Walmsley
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What happens to the adolescent spirit when all vestiges of innocence about the world are foregone, replaced within the grinding sounds of concrete and metal of the CBD of Melbourne? A place where train tunnels become nesting sites, carpark stairwells spots to refuel on methamphetamine and hide from predators; where agility leads you across nightclub rooftops, yielding cash in tight spaces with a quick reflex. For a rest, why not ride on the back of a train as it speeds through the night? The dangers of a decades-long exploration of risk in the streets of his city is exhilarating.
By: Dominic Gordon
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Dispersals
- On Plants, Borders and Belonging
- By: Jessica J. Lee
- Narrated by: Jessica J. Lee
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born in Canada to a Taiwanese mother and a Welsh father, steeped in both literary and scientific traditions, Jessica J. Lee is a perfectly placed observer of our world in motion. In this vibrant book of linked essays she explores the entanglements of the plant and human worlds, and the echoes and counterpoints she detects in the migration of plants and people - and the language we use to describe them.
By: Jessica J. Lee
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Familiarity Breeds Content
- New and Selected Essays
- By: Joseph Epstein
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
America’s greatest living essayist writes about life and aging and being all too nicely out of it. In these personal pieces, he takes on topics as varied as grieving for a dead son, learning Latin late in life, and the pleasures of living with cats. Epstein gives us a “bonfire of his own vanities,” his thoughts about why watching sports is so impossibly seductive, what it is like to be short, and why he misses smoking even decades as a health-obsessed non-smoker.
By: Joseph Epstein
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Notes of a Native Son
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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James Baldwin's breakthrough essay collection made him the voice of his generation. Ranging over Harlem in the 1940s, movies, novels, his preacher father and his experiences of Paris, they capture the complexity of black life at the dawn of the civil rights movement with effervescent wit and prophetic wisdom.
By: James Baldwin
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Ghost Dogs
- On Killers and Kin
- By: Andre Dubus III
- Narrated by: Andre Dubus III
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In Ghost Dogs, Dubus’s nonfiction prowess is on full display in his retelling of his own successes, failures, triumphs, and pain. In his longest essay, “If I Owned a Gun,” Dubus reflects on the empowerment and shame he felt in keeping a gun, and his decision, ultimately, to give it up. Elsewhere, he writes of a violent youth and of settled domesticity and fatherhood, about the omnipresent expectations and contradictions of masculinity, about the things writers remember and those they forget.
By: Andre Dubus III