After Life
A Novel
Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries
- By: Rhian Ellis
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus
- Length: 10 hours 20 minutes
Description
Naomi Ash was born in New Orleans and raised by her mother, Patsy, a medium who schooled her young daughter in the parlor-trick chicanery of the trade. From Naomi recreating presences with table cloths to providing the voice of the dead by talking through a fan, their act is part theater, part magic, and a little too much playing with the letter of the law. Eventually they must beat a hasty—and forced—retreat from New Orleans, relocating to Train Line, New York.
A sleepy village founded and inhabited by others with a spiritualist bent, Train Line is populated with card readers, table levitators, and crystal-shop owners. Low-rent “Psychic Faires” are held at the local Holiday Inn, and Patsy’s newest creation, “The Mother Galina Psychic Hour,” is on the local radio station. The town is a curious mix between old school “table rappers” and the New Age, and it is here that Naomi comes of age, learns the trade, and falls in love. But love is not only a many splendored thing—it can be dangerous as well. And for a young woman caught between fraud and truth, between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and between the secrets and lies of her youth, the past and present will come together in a rush of truth and consequence.
Hailed as “a study of eccentricities, which rises above the merely quirky to address those issues of life, death, memory, and love that preoccupy us all,” After Life is a stunning first novel of extraordinary suspense and evocative imagery.
Audiobook gift memberships
Gift audiobooks to anyone in the world (including yourself!) from the comfort of your home. You choose the membership (1, 3, 6, or 12 months/credits), your gift recipient picks their own audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start gifting
Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries Series
After Life
By: Rhian Ellis
Narrated by: Shannon McManus
Length: 10 hours 20 minutes
Abridged: No
Naomi Ash was born in New Orleans and raised by her mother, Patsy, a medium who schooled her young daughter in the parlor-trick chicanery of the trade. From Naomi recreating presences with table cloths to providing the voice of the dead by talking through a fan, their act is part theater, part magic, and a little too much playing with the letter... Read more »
Learn more
The Lion in the Lei Shop
By: Kaye Starbird
Narrated by: Tanya Eby, Kate Rudd & Nancy Pearl
Length: 8 hours 57 minutes
Abridged: No
Marty Langsmith is only five years old when a strange thunder rolls across the Hawaiian sky and life as she knows it explodes into flames. With her mother, April, and hundreds of other women and children, Marty is evacuated from the ruins of Pearl Harbor and sent into a brave new world overshadowed by uncertainty and grief. Feeling abandoned by... Read more »
Learn more
One Sweet Quarrel
By: Deirdre McNamer
Narrated by: Joyce Bean & Nancy Pearl
Length: 10 hours 38 minutes
Abridged: No
Brother and sister Jerry and Daisy Lou Malone leave behind their provincial Midwestern upbringing to test their mettle in the big, beckoning world of 1920s America. For Jerry, the future lies west, with like-minded pioneer souls keen to play the “land game” as homesteaders on the Great Plains. Daisy, in turn, heads for the lights and luxe life... Read more »
Learn more
The Girls From the Five Great Valleys
By: Elizabeth Savage
Length: 6 hours 23 minutes
Abridged: No
Five girls. Five dreams. Five destinies. Determined to climb the social ladder in Missoula, Montana, Hilary knows appearances are crucial to getting ahead—but she’s in for a rude awakening. With a rough home life, Doll seeks every chance she can to escape and hang out with one of the local bad boys, but her need to be noticed may land her in... Read more »
Learn more
A Gay and Melancholy Sound
By: Merle Miller
Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
Length: 21 hours 26 minutes
Abridged: No
The first book in nationally renowned librarian Nancy Pearl’s new Book Lust Rediscoveries series, this lost literary classic is available for the first time in decades. As funny and entertaining as it is captivating and heartrending, A Gay and Melancholy Sound is a shattering depiction of modern disconnection and the tragic consequences of a... Read more »
Learn more
Fool
By: Frederick G. Dillen
Narrated by: David Colacci
Length: 10 hours 35 minutes
Abridged: No
Self-absorbed Barnaby Griswold has to lose it all—money, homes, and family—before he gets a shot at becoming the unlikely hero of his own life.
Griswold is indisputably a fool. A well-educated, well-connected investments player on the one hand, but an entitled money-driven cretin on the other. His life changes almost overnight when he’s found to... Read more »
Learn more
One Minus One
By: Ruth Doan MacDougall
Narrated by: Amy McFadden
Length: 5 hours 34 minutes
Abridged: No
The year is 1969, a time of turmoil for the United States—and for thirty-year-old Emily Bean, who, following her devastating divorce, leaves her home in the New Hampshire mountains to work as a teacher in the state’s coastal region.
Still in love with her ex-husband, David, Emily struggles to adjust to single life. Women’s liberation and the... Read more »
Learn more
The Cowboy and the Cossack
By: Clair Huffaker
Narrated by: Phil Gigante
Length: 12 hours 41 minutes
Abridged: No
Fifteen Montana cowboys sail into Vladivostok with a herd of five hundred longhorns, ready to cross a thousand miles of Siberian wilderness. When a band of Cossacks, Russia’s elite horsemen and warriors, shows up to escort these rough and ready Americans to their destination, the clash of cultures begins. The feud between American six shooter... Read more »
Learn more
The Soul of Viktor Tronko
By: David Quammen
Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
Length: 17 hours 2 minutes
Abridged: No
When Soviet agent Viktor Tronko defected to the US in 1964, he made two intriguing claims: he insisted that Russia had not placed a mole inside the CIA, and that Lee Harvey Oswald had not been recruited to assassinate the president. Convinced that Tronko was working as a disinformation agent, the CIA furiously did everything they could to break... Read more »
Learn more
The Last Night at the Ritz
By: Elizabeth Savage
Narrated by: Janet Metzger
Length: 7 hours
Abridged: No
Brazen, candid, and always willing to take chances, the unnamed and not entirely trustworthy narrator of The Last Night at the Ritz celebrates her birthday with three old and dear friends. Two of them, Gay and Len, are a long-married couple and her best friends from college. The third, Wes, was once her lover.
Organizing a luncheon at Boston’s... Read more »
Learn more
Plum & Jaggers
By: Susan Richards Shreve
Narrated by: Christopher Lane & Nancy Pearl
Length: 7 hours 42 minutes
Abridged: No
For the McWilliams children, life is forever altered the day a terrorist bomb blast rips through the train carrying them across Italy, instantly killing their parents. Dazed and frightened, Charlotte, Oliver, and baby Julia cling to oldest brother Sam, who—only seven at the time—is haunted by every detail.
After he and his siblings are taken in... Read more »
Learn more
The Man in the Window
By: Jon Cohen
Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
Length: TBA
Abridged: No
“An off-beat love story…alternately deeply moving and laugh-aloud funny.” —Good Housekeeping
“Jon Cohen conjures magic, weaving a gentle romantic fantasy of piercing and eccentric beauty.” —Boston Globe
Since he was disfigured in a fire sixteen years ago, recluse Louis Malone has remained hidden from the prying eyes of his neighbors in the small... Read more »
Learn more