-
Reliance, Illinois
- Narrated by: Sandy Rustin
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $27.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A Mad, Wicked Folly
- By: Sharon Biggs Waller
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes 17-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist - a nearly impossible dream for a girl. After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind....
-
-
Victorious indeed!!
- By Stacey on 09-14-16
-
The Invention of Wings
- A Novel
- By: Sue Monk Kidd
- Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Adepero Oduye, Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world - and it is now the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
-
-
Historical Fiction - beautifully quilted!
- By Jan on 01-09-14
By: Sue Monk Kidd
-
The Golem and the Jinni
- A Novel
- By: Helene Wecker
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Helene Wecker's dazzling debut novel tells the story of two supernatural creatures who appear mysteriously in 1899 New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a strange man who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York Harbor. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian Desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.
-
-
What does it mean to be human?
- By Janice on 08-05-13
By: Helene Wecker
-
The Chaperone
- By: Laura Moriarty
- Narrated by: Elizabeth McGovern
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
> The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a 15-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip.
-
-
Can’t an artist keep their current day politics to themselves?!
- By Loonasea on 09-12-20
By: Laura Moriarty
-
The English Wife
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Willig
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: He's the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairy-tale romance in London, and he's recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball; Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned; and the papers go mad.
-
-
Great Period Piece
- By Anonymous User on 08-06-18
By: Lauren Willig
-
The Shifting Fog [also published under the alternate title The House at Riverton]
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks.
-
-
Alternate title for "The House at Riverton"
- By Karen on 12-22-13
By: Kate Morton
-
A Mad, Wicked Folly
- By: Sharon Biggs Waller
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes 17-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist - a nearly impossible dream for a girl. After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind....
-
-
Victorious indeed!!
- By Stacey on 09-14-16
-
The Invention of Wings
- A Novel
- By: Sue Monk Kidd
- Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Adepero Oduye, Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world - and it is now the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
-
-
Historical Fiction - beautifully quilted!
- By Jan on 01-09-14
By: Sue Monk Kidd
-
The Golem and the Jinni
- A Novel
- By: Helene Wecker
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Helene Wecker's dazzling debut novel tells the story of two supernatural creatures who appear mysteriously in 1899 New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a strange man who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York Harbor. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian Desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.
-
-
What does it mean to be human?
- By Janice on 08-05-13
By: Helene Wecker
-
The Chaperone
- By: Laura Moriarty
- Narrated by: Elizabeth McGovern
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
> The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a 15-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip.
-
-
Can’t an artist keep their current day politics to themselves?!
- By Loonasea on 09-12-20
By: Laura Moriarty
-
The English Wife
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Willig
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: He's the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairy-tale romance in London, and he's recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball; Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned; and the papers go mad.
-
-
Great Period Piece
- By Anonymous User on 08-06-18
By: Lauren Willig
-
The Shifting Fog [also published under the alternate title The House at Riverton]
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks.
-
-
Alternate title for "The House at Riverton"
- By Karen on 12-22-13
By: Kate Morton
-
The Forgotten Room
- By: Karen White, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig
- Narrated by: Morgan Hallett, Susan Bennett
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?
-
-
The same story 3 times over...
- By Amazon Customer on 03-30-16
By: Karen White, and others
-
I Was Anastasia
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Lawhon
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood, Sian Thomas, Ariel Lawhon
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survives. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.
-
-
Review
- By Amazon Customer on 08-24-18
By: Ariel Lawhon
-
Finding Dorothy
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Letts
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee, Elizabeth Letts
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hollywood, 1938: As soon as she learns MGM is adapting her late husband’s masterpiece for the screen, 77-year-old Maud Gage Baum sets about trying to finagle her way onto the set. Nineteen years after Frank’s passing, Maud is the only person who can help the producers stay true to the spirit of the book - because she’s the only one left who knows its secrets. But the moment she hears Judy Garland rehearsing the first notes of “Over the Rainbow”, Maud recognizes the yearning that defined her own life story.
-
-
Simple
- By Douglas A. Saunders on 04-02-19
By: Elizabeth Letts
-
The Crimson Petal and the White
- By: Michel Faber
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 41 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
NOW A MAJOR BBC DRAMA starring Romola Garai, Chris O'Dowd, Gillian Anderson, Richard E. Grant, Shirley Henderson and Mark Gatiss. 'Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them....' So begins this irresistible voyage into the dark side of Victorian London. Amongst an unforgettable cast of low-lifes, physicians, businessmen, and prostitutes, meet our heroine Sugar, a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can.
-
-
Loved this Book!!
- By anniepaints on 06-16-11
By: Michel Faber
-
A Drowned Maiden's Hair
- A Melodrama
- By: Laura Amy Schiltz
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laura Amy Schlitz delivers this Horn Book Fanfare and Laura Amy Schlitz delivers this Horn Book Fanfare and Cybils Award-winning best-seller that whisks 11-year-old Maud Flynn from a cold New England orphanage and into the stately mansion of three wealthy spinsters. After the Hawthorne sisters adopt her in 1909, they tell her she's their secret child. She must remain indoors at all times and must never stand in front of windows. Maud doesn't mind their restrictions. But she does wonder what could possibly require such secrecy.
-
-
loved it!
- By Lydia on 02-22-08
-
That Summer
- By: Lauren Willig
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Julia Conley hears that she has inherited a house outside London from an unknown great-aunt, she assumes it’s a joke. She hasn't been back to England since the car crash that killed her mother when she was six, an event she remembers only in her nightmares. But when she arrives at Herne Hill to sort through the house - with the help of her cousin Natasha and sexy antiques dealer Nicholas - bits of memory start coming back.
-
-
I liked it
- By A. on 06-27-14
By: Lauren Willig
-
The Daring Ladies of Lowell
- A Novel
- By: Kate Alcott
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Dressmaker comes a moving historical novel about a bold young woman drawn to the looms of Lowell, Massachusetts - and to the one man with whom she has no business falling in love. Eager to escape life on her family’s farm, Alice Barrow moves to Lowell in 1832 and throws herself into the hard work demanded of "the mill girls." In spite of the long hours, she discovers a vibrant new life and a true friend - a saucy, strong-willed girl name Lovey Cornell.
-
-
overall a good read!
- By Kindle Customer on 01-12-17
By: Kate Alcott
-
The Unseen
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Webb
- Narrated by: Clare Wille
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A vicar with a passion for nature, the Reverend Albert Canning leads a happy existence with his naive wife, Hester, in their sleepy Berkshire village in the year 1911. But as the English summer dawns, the Cannings' lives are forever changed by two new arrivals: Cat, their new maid, a disaffected, free-spirited young woman sent down from London after entanglements with the law; and Robin Durrant, a leading expert in the occult, enticed by tales of elemental beings in the water meadows nearby.
-
-
Great book!
- By Dana on 09-03-12
By: Katherine Webb
-
Instruments of Darkness
- A Novel
- By: Imogen Robertson
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the year 1780, Harriet Westerman, the willful mistress of a country manor in Sussex, finds a dead man on her grounds with a ring bearing the crest of Thornleigh Hall in his pocket. Not one to be bound by convention or to shy away from adventure, she recruits a reclusive local anatomist named Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer, and historical suspense's newest investigative duo is born.
-
-
Not The Best, But Not Too Bad...
- By MJ on 01-13-13
By: Imogen Robertson
-
Except the Dying
- A Murdoch Mystery, Book 1
- By: Maureen Jennings
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the naked body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. The young victim was pregnant when she died. Detective William Murdoch soon discovers that many of those connected with the girl's life have secrets to hide. Was her death on attempt to cover up a scandal in one of the city's influential families?
-
-
Gritty not grisly; above average Victorian mystery
- By connie on 06-22-12
By: Maureen Jennings
-
Secrets of Nanreath Hall
- A Novel
- By: Alix Rickloff
- Narrated by: Lauren Irwin, Laura Waddell
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cornwall, 1940. Back in England after the harrowing evacuation at Dunkirk, WWII Red Cross nurse Anna Trenowyth is shocked to learn her adoptive parents, Graham and Prue Handley, have been killed in an air raid. She desperately needs their advice, as she's been assigned to the military hospital that has set up camp inside her biological mother's childhood home - Nanreath Hall. Anna was just six years old when her mother, Lady Katherine Trenowyth, died. All she has left are vague memories that tease her with clues she can't unravel.
-
-
Well done both narrators and Author !
- By Andover Meadow on 09-17-16
By: Alix Rickloff
-
The Glass Ocean
- A Novel
- By: Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White
- Narrated by: Vanessa Johansson, Saskia Maarleveld, Brittany Pressley
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century - two deep in the past, one in the present - to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.... Her finances are in dire straits, and best-selling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history.
-
-
I enjoyed this book, at least most of it.
- By Kevin Greaser on 10-02-18
By: Beatriz Williams, and others
Publisher's Summary
Reliance, Illinois tells the story of a young woman faced with choices that will alter the course of her own future, and offers a brilliant window into American life during a period of tumultuous change.
Illinois, 1874: With a birthmark covering half her face, 13-year-old Madelyn Branch is accustomed to cold and awkward greetings, and expects no less in the struggling town of Reliance. After all, her mother, Rebecca, was careful not to mention a daughter in the Matrimonial Times ad that brought them there. When Rebecca weds, Madelyn poses as her mother's younger sister and earns a grudging berth in her new house.
Deeply injured by her mother's deceptions, Madelyn soon leaves to enter the service of Miss Rose Werner, prodigal daughter of the town's founder. Miss Rose is a suffragette and purveyor of black market birth control who sees in Madelyn a project and potential acolyte. Madelyn, though, wants to feel beautiful and loved, and she pins her hopes on William Stark, a young photographer and haunted Civil War veteran.
Reliance, Illinois tells the story of a young woman faced with choices that will alter the course of her own future, and offers a brilliant window into American life during a period of tumultuous change.
More from the same
Narrator
What listeners say about Reliance, Illinois
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kindle Customer
- 08-16-16
Engaging journey into another world and time.
Any additional comments?
I never lacked the right to vote. I never had my body controlled or owned by a husband or father. And, I’ve never experienced being separated from others by a shocking physical difference.
Until, that is, I spent several hours in Reliance, Illinois, in the 1870s, experiencing life as a fatherless, indeed motherless, young girl with a face-to-torso port-wine birthmark. The audible version, brilliantly read by Sandy Rustin, was an amazing journey into another world and time.
An Interesting, and interestingly flawed, cast of characters weave their way through a gossamer web of secrets in a time often glossed over as not as dramatic as some others, while sewing the seeds of changes to come. For the eleven listening hours, Maddy, Miss. Rose, Rebecca, William, Handley … all were family and will stay with me for a long time.