Chick Lit Audiobooks | Fiction & Literature

With her first novel, Liars and Saints, award-winning author Maile Meloy more than delivers on the promise of her highly acclaimed debut story collection, Half in Love. This richly textured novel tells a story of sex and longing, love and loss, and of the deceit that can lie at the heart of family relationships. Set in California, Liars and Saints follows four generations of the Catholic Santerre family from World War II to the present. In a family driven as much by jealousy and propriety as by love, an unspoken tradition of deceit is passed from generation to generation. When tragedy shatters their precarious domestic lives, it takes astonishing courage and compassion to bring them back together. By turns funny and disturbing, irreverent and profound, Liars and Saints is a masterful display of Maile Meloy's prodigious gifts and of her penetrating insight into an extraordinary American family and the nature of human love.

Maile Meloy (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Cum Laude

Theyre here for a higher education . . . and you wont believe how far theyll go. Dexter College is a small liberal arts college in the quiet town of Home, Maine. But it wont stay quiet for long with this group of freshmen. Theres Shipley - blonde and beautiful, the object of envy and more than a little lust. Determined to assert herself and to shed her good-girl image, she buys cigarettes and condoms, because thats what every self-respecting college girl does. Her edgy roommate, Eliza, came to Dexter to get noticed, and she has the attitude and the mouth to prove it. Then theres Tom. Handsome, privileged, used to getting his own way, hes a jock-turned-artist who thinks his paintings will change the world. Sensitive Nick, Toms wake-and-bake pot-smoking roommate, wants to follow in the footsteps of his boarding-school hero. And then there are brother and sister Adam and Tragedy Gatz. The freckle-faced farm boy lives at home with his parents and his little sister, who does all she can to stop him from being a wuss. As Shipley, Eliza, Tom, Nick, and Adam find out, that first year of college is more than credits and cramming. Between the lust and the love, the secrecy and the scandal, theyll all receive an unexpected education. Its a time of shifting alliances, unrequited crushes, and coming of age. Find Yourself is Dexters motto. And they are determined to do just that.

Cecily Von Ziegesar (Author), Tara Sands (Narrator)

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Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi: A Novel

Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman, a jaded and dissolute journalist, whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled party-going is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets the spellbinding Laura, he is rejuvenated, ecstatic. Their romance blossoms quickly, but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly? Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only for a few days, he ends up staying for months, and suddenly finds a hitherto unexamined idea of himself, the self. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced. In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other. Could two stories, in two different cities, actually be one and the same story? An irrepressible and wildly original novel of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi is dead-on in its evocation of place, longing, and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment. 'No contemporary writer blends genres better than Geoff Dyer, and his latest novel'a vigorous mash-up of satire, romance, travelogue and existential treatise'is his best yet'Dyer excels at savage comedy'see his tableau of jaded art critics desperately swilling Bellinis'but he's even better on the profound pleasures and indignities of the flesh, which are the forces that unite his novel's two very separate worlds.''Time magazine, 'The Top 10 Everything of 2009'

Geoff Dyer (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

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Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel

Ntozake Shange's most beloved novel, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, is the story of three 'colored girls,' three sisters and their mama from Charleston, South Carolina. Sassafrass, the oldest, is a poet and a weaver like her mother, gone north to college and living with other artists in Los Angeles, trying to weave a life out of her work, her man, her memories, and her dreams. Cypress, the dancer, leaves home to find new ways of moving and easing the contractions of her soul. Indigo, the youngest, is still a child of Charleston'with 'too much of the South in her''who lives in poetry, can talk to her dolls, and has a great gift of seeing the obvious magic of the world. 'Miss Shange writes with such exquisite care and beauty that anybody can relate to her message.''New York Times

Ntozake Shange (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

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Grace: A Christmas Sisters of the Heart Novel

It's Christmastime at the Brenneman Bed & Breakfast, and everyone is excited about closing down for the holiday. Anna and Henry will be celebrating their first Christmas as a married couple, and for Katie and Jonathan Lundy, it's their first Christmas with baby Stefan. Winnie and Samuel Miller plan to stop by as well for a wonderful two weeks of family and rest. But when two unexpected visitors show up, hoping to stay for Christmas, the family must test their commitment to hospitality. Levi is a widower who lost his wife four years ago and can't bear the thought of another Christmas alone. And Melody is a young pregnant woman who won't open up about how she ended up on her own at Christmas at almost'nine months pregnant. Anna, who knows a thing or two about keeping secrets, doesn't trust her, and strives to find out the truth about these two strangers who have disrupted their holiday. But as the Christmas spirit descends on them all, along with a snow that traps them'at the inn, a healing and hopefulness takes over, allowing new relationships to be built and the boundaries of family to be extended.

Shelley Shepard Gray (Author), Kirsten Potter (Narrator)

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Sea Change: A Novel

A stunning follow-up from the author of the memorable debut, Salt. A field, a perfect morning, and a family destroyed in a single moment. After the death of his only daughter and the dissolution of his marriage, Guy is left alone and searching for answers. He sets out to sea on an old Dutch barge'acquired on a whim'that has now become his home. Every night Guy writes the imagined diary of the man he should be'and the family he should have. Every morning he wakes to the knowledge of all he has lost. Guy embarks on the stormy waters of the North Sea, while in his diary he recounts an unforgettable trip through the small towns and nightclubs of the rural American South. As he travels, Guy's stories begin to unfold in unexpected ways. And when he meets two women who are also at sea and searching for answers, he realizes that it might just be possible to begin his life again. Haunting and exquisitely crafted,'Sea Change is a deeply affecting novel of love and family by an acclaimed young writer. 'With lyricism and poise, Page renders a doubly engaging story, with one narrative as intricate and essential as the other.''Publishers Weekly

Jeremy Page (Author), John Lee (Narrator)

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Heart of the City: Nine Stories of Love and Serendipity on the Streets of New York

The handsome Texas sailor who offers dinner to a runaway in Central Park. The Midwestern college girl who stops a cop in Times Square for restaurant advice. The Brooklyn man on a midnight subway who helps a weary tourist find her way to Chinatown. The Columbia University graduate student who encounters an unexpected object of beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A public place in the world's greatest city. A chance meeting of strangers. A marriage. Heart of the City tells the remarkable true stories of nine ordinary couples'from the 1940s to the present'whose matchmaker was the city of New York. Intrigued by the romance of his own parents, who met in Washington Square Park, award-winning author Ariel Sabar set off on a far-ranging search for other couples who married after first meeting in one of New York City's iconic public spaces. Sabar conjures their big-city love stories in novel-like detail, drawing us into the hearts of strangers just as their lives are about to change forever. In setting the stage for these surprising, funny, and moving tales, Sabar, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, offers a fascinating look at the role of place in how'and whether'people meet and fall in love. 'Love stories and urban studies merge in these'cozy, seductive narratives.''Kirkus Reviews

Ariel Sabar (Author), Neil Shah (Narrator)

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Caribou Island: A Novel

On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, Gary and Irene's marriage is unraveling. Alone now that the children are grown, Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, is determined to build from scratch the cabin he has always wanted, believing it will recapture what once drew him to Alaska. Irene knows better. She suspects that the cabin is Gary's first step to leaving her. Soon they are hauling logs out to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health. But setbacks begin to create chinks in Gary's half-baked design, while Irene is stricken with mysterious headaches and troubling flashes of her tragic past. With each trip to the island their desperation escalates, and when winter comes early, the punishing desolation of the prehistoric wilderness will threaten to push Irene and Gary to the edge and end a marriage sustained by pain and rage that has been simmering for years. A noir novel rooted in a world of profound violence and regret, Caribou Island is an exploration of marriage and exile set against the interminable restlessness of Alaska's primal landscape. Praise for Legend of a Suicide: 'The reportorial relentlessness of Vann's imagination often makes his fiction seem less written than chiseled. A small, lovely book has been written out of his large and evident pain.''New York Times Book Review

David Vann (Author), Bronson Pinchot (Narrator)

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The Forgotten Waltz

Irish novelist Anne Enright won the coveted Man Booker Prize for her eloquent novel The Gathering. In The Forgotten Waltz, Enright crafts a stunning tale about a Dublin woman's affair and its heartrending consequences. Gina Moynihan is already married when she meets Se'n Vallely. But longing and desire soon overtake them'and their lives begin to crumble shortly after. 'A breathtaking work that will surprise you; highly recommended.''Library Journal

Anne Enright (Author), Heather O'Neill (Narrator)

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Perfected By Girls

Navigating high school isn't easy for Melinda Radford. She's the lone girl on the Ashton High wrestling team, grappling with opponents who refuse to compete against her, a few who want to crush her, and a coach who's less-than-pleased having a female in his practice room. At home, Mel's parents forbid her from seeing her new boyfriend, her grandmother insists she start preparing for her future by taking a dreary office internship, and her infuriating older brother, who's the varsity team captain, flirts with her best friend, Jade. Just when it seems things can't get any more complicated, an off-handed comment puts Mel at odds with her teammates, her brother, and, worst of all, her coach. But through a twist of tragedy and fate, Mel is given an unexpected opportunity to accomplish something no girl in her school's history has ever done'something that just may redeem herself in the eyes of her detractors. But is she strong enough to handle the pressure?

Alfred C. Martino (Author), Jen Taylor (Narrator)

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Stately Pursuits

'You're not doing very much at the moment, darling. I don't suppose you'd care to house-sit for a while?' Thus begins the irresistible story of two fixer-uppers'an old house and a young woman'and their efforts to recapture their true luster. When Hetty Longden, freshly dumped and brokenhearted, agrees to look after her great-uncle's dilapidated mansion in the English countryside, she's at something of a lifetime low. With no job, no lover, no prospects, and no particular talent for resuscitating crumbling estates, she hopes for nothing more than some good old-fashioned escape. What she finds includes a cast of quirky and ever-present neighbors, a couple of SNAGs (Sensitive New Age Guys); some very humorless bank officials; a cat and two disarming little canines; one gracious, dilapidated, romantic old house; and, just maybe, enough elbow grease to polish everything up again. A Sunday Times (London) bestseller that's as inviting as an elegant old house full of unexplored rooms, after a good scrubbing-down, of course, Stately Pursuits is the funniest, smartest, and warmest read of the season. 'Charming'Enormously enjoyable'Like listening to Cole Porter or watching The Philadelphia Story.''Newsday

Katie Fforde (Author), Roe Kendall (Narrator)

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The Blue Lagoon

Two young children, cousins Dicky and Emmeline Lestrange, and a galley cook survive a shipwreck in the South Pacific and are stranded on a lush tropical island. The cook, kindly old salt Paddy Button, assumes the responsibility for caring for the children. Paddy eventually dies in a drunken binge and the children are left to survive solely on their resourcefulness and the bounty of their remote paradise. In time, Richard and Emmeline grow into beautiful young adults when strange emotions begin to influence their relationship.

H. De Vere Stacpoole (Author), Adrian Praetzellis (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chick Lit Audiobooks in Fiction & Literature