Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/270736 to listen full audiobooks. Title: It is Well: A Novel Author: James D. Shipman Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 22 minutes Release date: November 1, 2016 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: Jonathan Beecher, a middle-aged widower and small-town store owner, has never asked for much. But lately, all too much is being asked of him. The bombing of Pearl Harbor plunges America into World War II and deeply fractures Jonathan’s own family. His eldest son, a civilian contractor, is trapped on a Japanese-occupied island in the Pacific. Jonathan’s feckless younger son ignores his father’s pleas to stay home and joins the army. And his bright, devoted daughter, who Jonathan hoped would go to college, elopes with a brutally abusive man instead. Jonathan has always met adversity with quiet faith, but as his emotional and financial losses accumulate, so do his doubts. In the midst of his pain, Sarah, a widow herself, emerges as a kind, compelling friend. Powerfully drawn to Sarah, Jonathan struggles to remain true to his late wife. James D. Shipman’s tender, wise novel examines the paradox of human suffering: how irrevocable loss, if we are willing to let it, begets spiritual gain.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273516 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Beauty and Attention: A Novel Author: Liz Rosenberg Narrator: Cassandra Campbell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 50 minutes Release date: October 25, 2016 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: The riveting story of one brave young woman’s struggle to free herself from a web of deceit. For misfit Libby Archer, social expectations for young women in Rochester, New York, in the mid-1950s don’t work. Her father has died, leaving her without parents, and her well-meaning friends are pressuring her to do what any sensible single girl must do: marry a passionate, persistent hometown suitor with a promising future. Yet Libby boldly defies conventional wisdom and plans to delay marriage—to anyone—by departing for her uncle’s Belfast estate. In Ireland, Libby seeks not only the comfort of family but also greater opportunities than seem possible during the stifling McCarthy era at home. Across the Atlantic, Libby finds common ground with her brilliant, invalid cousin, Lazarus, then puts her trust in a sophisticated older woman who seems to be everything she hopes to become. Fraught with betrayal and long-kept secrets, as well as sudden wealth and unexpected love, Libby’s journey toward independence takes turns she never could have predicted—and calls on courage and strength she never knew she had.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273822 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Other Einstein Author: Marie Benedict Narrator: Mozhan Marnò Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 30 minutes Release date: October 18, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.23 of Total 60 Ratings of Narrator: 4.75 of Total 16 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: In the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. This is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated and may have been inspired by her own profound and very personal insight. Mitza Maric has always been a little different from other girls. Most twenty-year-olds are wives by now, not studying physics at an elite Zurich university with only male students trying to outdo her clever calculations. But Mitza is smart enough to know that, for her, math is an easier path than marriage. And then fellow student Albert Einstein takes an interest in her, and the world turns sideways. Theirs becomes a partnership of the mind and of the heart, but there might not be room for more than one genius in a marriage.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273551 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Queen's Accomplice: A Maggie Hope Mystery Series: #6 of Maggie Hope Author: Susan Elia MacNeal Narrator: Susan Duerden Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 37 minutes Release date: October 4, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.22 of Total 9 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: Spy and code-breaker extraordinaire Maggie Hope returns to war-weary London, where she is thrust into the dangerous hunt for a monster, as the New York Times bestselling mystery series for fans of Jacqueline Winspear, Charles Todd, and Anne Perry continues. England, 1942. The Nazis’ relentless Blitz may have paused, but London’s nightly blackouts continue. Now, under the cover of darkness, a madman is brutally killing and mutilating young women in eerie and exact re-creations of Jack the Ripper’s crimes. What’s more, he’s targeting women who are reporting for duty to be Winston Churchill’s spies and saboteurs abroad. The officers at MI-5 quickly realize they need the help of special agent Maggie Hope to find the killer dubbed “the Blackout Beast.” A trap is set. But once the murderer has his sights on Maggie, not even Buckingham Palace can protect the resourceful spy from her fate. Praise for The Queen’s Accomplice “Maggie is a thoughtful spy whose dangerous escapades never disappoint.”—Kirkus Reviews “A fine historical mystery given a feminist slant.”—Booklist “Plausible and elegant . . . Like all MacNeal’s novels, this one ends on a cliffhanger that will leave readers eagerly awaiting Maggie’s next adventure.”—Shelf Awareness “Works as a suspenseful stand-alone . . . interesting and informative . . . wartime London is vividly portrayed . . . recommended for those who like their historical mysteries with a large dose of suspense.”—Historical Novel Society “For those who are Maggie Hope diehards, this latest in the series is sure to satisfy.”—Reviewing the Evidence “MacNeal’s meticulous research shines through on every page, and pays off with a wartime atmosphere that feels real.”—Crimespree Magazine

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/270834 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd: A Flavia de Luce Novel Series: #8 of Flavia de Luce Author: Alan Bradley Narrator: Jayne Entwistle Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 1 minute Release date: September 20, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.71 of Total 14 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Hailed as “a combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes” by The Boston Globe, Flavia de Luce returns in a Christmas mystery from award-winning author Alan Bradley. In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia’s blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty—and not empty enough. Only too eager to run an errand for the vicar’s wife, Flavia hops on her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to deliver a message to a reclusive wood-carver. Finding the front door ajar, Flavia enters and stumbles upon the poor man’s body hanging upside down on the back of his bedroom door. The only living creature in the house is a feline that shows little interest in the disturbing scene. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. It’s amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one’s spirits. But what awaits Flavia will shake her to the very core. Praise for Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d “Mystery fans seeking novels of wit, an immersive English countryside setting, and rich characterizations will be rewarded with this newest entry in the award-winning series.”—Library Journal (starred review) “There is such a thing as willing suspension of disbelief brought on by sheer outlandish charm, and that’s what [Alan] Bradley and some delicious writing have tapped.”—London Free Press “Flavia’s first-person narration reveals her precocious intellect as well as her youthful vulnerability.”—Shelf Awareness “Flavia is once again a fun, science-loving protagonist. . . . This series entry ends on a note that begs for the next story.”—Library Reads “An eleven-year-old prodigy with an astonishing mind for chemistry and a particular interest in poisons.”—The Strand Magazine (Five of the Best Historical Heroines) “Bradley’s preteen heroine comes through in the end with a series of deductions so clever she wants to hug herself. So will you.”—Kirkus Reviews

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/272472 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Killoe: A Novel Author: Louis L'Amour Narrator: Michael Crouch Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 3 hours 48 minutes Release date: September 13, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 6 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: Dan Killoe—over six feet of tough, raw, lightning fast man.  He had a trail heard and a mass of settlers to get across unknown territory to a new land.  Then he gave shelter to a stranger being hunted by Felipe Soto, scar-faced leader of the renegade Comancheros.  This time Killoe was borrowing more trouble than he wanted to handle.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/272958 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Tea Planter's Wife: A Novel Author: Dinah Jefferies Narrator: Avita Jay Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 16 hours 0 minutes Release date: September 13, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • 1920s Ceylon: A young Englishwoman marries a charming tea plantation owner and widower, only to discover he's keeping terrible secrets about his past, including what happened to his first wife, that lead to devastating consequences In this lush, atmospheric page-turner, nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper has married Laurence, the seductively mysterious owner of a vast tea empire in colonial Ceylon, after a whirlwind romance in London. When she joins him at his faraway tea plantation, she’s filled with hope for their life together, eager to take on the role of mistress of the house, learn the tea business, and start a family. But life in Ceylon is not what Gwen expected. The plantation workers are resentful, the neighbors and her new sister-in-law treacherous. Gwen finds herself drawn to a local Sinhalese man of questionable intentions and worries about her new husband’s connection to a brash American businesswoman. But most troubling are the unanswered questions surrounding Laurence’s first marriage. Why won’t anyone discuss the fate of his first wife? Who’s buried in the unmarked grave in the forest? As the darkness of her husband’s past emerges, Gwen is forced to make a devastating choice, one that could destroy their future and Gwen’s chance at happiness.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/270024 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel Author: Amor Towles Narrator: Nicholas Guy Smith Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 53 minutes Release date: September 6, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.4 of Total 931 Ratings of Narrator: 4.82 of Total 242 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: A New York Times “Readers’ Choice: Best Books of the 21st Century” Pick The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Table for Two, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/272742 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Jubilee, 50th Anniversary Edition Author: Margaret Walker Narrator: Robin Miles Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 45 minutes Release date: September 6, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 8 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: The fiftieth-anniversary edition of Margaret Walker’s bestselling classic with a foreword by Nikki Giovanni Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the South’s antebellum opulence and to its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction. Weaving her own family’s oral history with thirty years of research, Margaret Walker’s novel brings the everyday experiences of slaves to light. Jubilee churns with the hunger, the hymns, the struggles, and the very breath of American history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/269637 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Crockett of Tennessee: A Novel Based on the Life and Times of David Crockett Author: Cameron Judd Narrator: Allan Robertson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 11 minutes Release date: September 6, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: From humble beginnings in rural Tennessee to his heroic death defending the Alamo, frontiersman, adventurer, and politician David Davy Crockett embodies the spirit and ideals of the national character. Even during his lifetime, tales of the sharpshooting, skilled woodsman were—to his delight—told, retold, and elaborated on. As a US congressman, the former Creek War militiaman steadfastly opposed President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act. As a soldier, he made the ultimate sacrifice fighting for an independent Texas. Nearly two centuries after his untimely demise, he remains a legendary figure in American lore. In this fictional account of Crockett's life, author Cameron Judd offers a nuanced portrait of the man behind the myth.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/270574 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Risen: A Novel Author: Ron Rash Narrator: Richard Ferrone Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 22 minutes Release date: September 6, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.5 of Total 4 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash demonstrates his superb narrative skills in this suspenseful and evocative tale of two brothers whose lives are altered irrevocably by the events of one long-ago summer—and one bewitching young woman—and the secrets that could destroy their lives. While swimming in a secluded creek on a hot Sunday in 1969, sixteen-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bill, meet the entrancing Ligeia. A sexy, free-spirited redhead from Daytona Beach banished to their small North Carolina town until the fall, Ligeia will not only bewitch the two brothers, but lure them into a struggle that reveals the hidden differences in their natures. Drawn in by her raw sensuality and rebellious attitude, Eugene falls deeper under her spell. Ligeia introduces him to the thrills and pleasures of the counterculture movement, then in its headiest moment. But just as the movement’s youthful optimism turns dark elsewhere in the country that summer, so does Eugene and Ligeia’s brief romance. Eugene moves farther and farther away from his brother, the cautious and dutiful Bill, and when Ligeia vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, the growing rift between the two brothers becomes immutable. Decades later, their relationship is still turbulent, and the once close brothers now lead completely different lives. Bill is a gifted and successful surgeon, a paragon of the community, while Eugene, the town reprobate, is a failed writer and determined alcoholic. When a shocking reminder of the past unexpectedly surfaces, Eugene is plunged back into that fateful summer, and the girl he cannot forget. The deeper he delves into his memories, the closer he comes to finding the truth. But can Eugene’s recollections be trusted? And will the truth set him free and offer salvation . . . or destroy his damaged life and everyone he loves?

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273681 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Forgotten Women Author: Freda Lightfoot Narrator: Anne Flosnik Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 26 minutes Release date: September 6, 2016 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: It is 1936 and Spain is on the brink of civil war. Across Europe, young men are enlisting in the International Brigade to free their Spanish brethren from the grip of fascism, leaving sisters and lovers at home. But not all women are content to be left behind. In Britain, Charlotte McBain and Libby Forbes, friends from opposite sides of the class divide, are determined to do what they can; in Spain, Rosita García Díaz, fiercely loyal to her family and country, cannot stand by and watch. Three brave women, inspired by patriotism, idealism, love and even revenge, dare to go into battle against tradition and oppression. Tying them all together is Jo, Libby’s granddaughter. Five decades later she travels to Spain hoping to make sense of a troubling letter hidden among her grandmother’s possessions. What she learns will change all of their lives forever. Deceit, heartbreak and a longstanding fear of reprisals must all be overcome if the deeds of the forgotten women are to be properly honoured.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273658 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Ancient Evenings: A Novel Author: Norman Mailer Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 29 hours 58 minutes Release date: August 30, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: Norman Mailer’s dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel of ancient Egypt breathes life into the figures of a lost era: the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover, and victim; and the gods and mortals that surround them in intimate and telepathic communion. Mailer’s reincarnated protagonist is carried through the exquisite gardens of the royal harem, along the majestic flow of the Nile, and into the terrifying clash of battle. An extraordinary work of inventiveness, Ancient Evenings lives on in the mind long after the last page has been turned.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273659 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Autumn in Oxford: A Novel Author: Alex Rosenberg Narrator: Justine Eyre Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 54 minutes Release date: August 30, 2016 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: After being blacklisted for having communist sympathies as a student twenty years before, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Tom Wrought escapes America’s Cold War climate to teach at Oxford. There, he falls in love with Liz Spencer, a beautiful married woman. When Liz’s husband is pushed in front of a train in the London Underground, Tom is immediately arrested for the murder. Scotland Yard is convinced it has its man, as he had means, motive, and opportunity. Certain of his innocence, Liz hires a young solicitor, Alice Silverstone, to defend Tom. But they discover that Tom’s former secret work as an American spy made him a number of powerful enemies. Russian intelligence, British counterespionage, and even the FBI all may have reason to frame him. If Liz and Alice can find out who is behind the murder, they stand a chance of freeing Tom, but doing so puts all their lives at risk.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273412 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea Author: James Fenimore Cooper Narrator: Mark F. Smith Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 18 hours 47 minutes Release date: August 26, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: Natty Bumppo goes by many names: La Longue Carabine, Hawk Eye, Leatherstocking, and in this tale, The Pathfinder. Guide, scout, hunter, and when put to it, soldier, he also fills a lot of roles in pre-Revolution upstate New York. An old friend, Sergeant Dunham of the 55th Regiment of Foot, asks him to guide his daughter through the wilderness to the fort at Oswego where Dunham serves. With the French engaging native Indian allies against the British and the Yankee colonists, such a journey is far from safe. Dunham has a plan in mind - to see his daughter Mable married off to the most redoubtable frontiersman and marksman in the territory, who is Pathfinder himself. But as an attractive and marriageable young lady, she draws other suitors. Then a military expedition contrives to put Sgt. Dunham, Mable, Pathfinder, and two other wooers into an isolated and dangerous garrison. Here treachery raises the stakes, and with the soldiers of the detachment shot down or captured, all of them must show mettle for any of them to escape with their scalps.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273343 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Felix Holt, The Radical Author: George Eliot Narrator: LibriVox Volunteers Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 19 hours 10 minutes Release date: August 26, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: "Harold Transome is a landowner who goes against his family's political tradition (much to his mother's distress), while Felix Holt is a sincere radical. The setting of the book, the 1832 parliament election, is used to discuss the social problems of that time. A secondary plot involves Esther Lyon, the stepdaughter of a minister who is the real heiress to the Transome estate, with whom both Harold Transome and Felix Holt fall in love. Esther loves poor Felix Holt, but would she choose a comfortable life with Harold Transome?" (Summary by Stav Nisser)

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273380 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Adventures of Roderick Random Author: Tobias Smollett Narrator: Arthur Krolman Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 19 hours 11 minutes Release date: August 26, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: I am Roderick Random. This is the contemporary story of my struggle against the adversity of orphan-hood, poverty, press gangs, bloody duels, rival fortune hunters, and the challenge to be well-dressed through it all. In the course of recounting my adventures to you, dear reader, I will give you a front row seat to the characters of English eighteenth century life including highway robbers, womanizing monks, debt-laden gallants, lecherous corrupt officials, effeminate sea captains, bloodthirsty surgeons, and my dear friend Miss Williams, a reformed prostitute. Educated in the classics, armed with a confident conscientious attitude and my long-suffering sidekick, Strap, I fight the good fight staying, on the whole, morally upstanding throughout. Today, if there be such a thing as true happiness on earth, I enjoy it -- and without having spent a fortune on college either. After hearing me out, I expect you'll be as wonderfully transported as one dear wealthy gentleman who listened to my whole story and then blessed God for the adversity I had undergone, which, he said, enlarged the understanding, improved the heart, steeled the constitution, and qualified a young man for all the duties and enjoyments of life much better than any education which affluence could bestow. Summary by Arthur Krolman.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273413 to listen full audiobooks. Title: North and South (Version 2) Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Narrator: LibriVox Volunteers Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 18 hours 34 minutes Release date: August 26, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 2.75 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 1 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: North and South is a social novel that tries to show the industrial North and its conflicts in the mid-19th century as seen by an outsider, a socially sensitive lady from the South. The story: the heroine, Margaret Hale, is the daughter of a Nonconformist minister who moves to the fictional industrial town of Milton after leaving the Church of England. The town is modeled after Manchester, where Gaskell lived as the wife of a Unitarian minister. The change of lifestyle shocks Margaret, who sympathizes deeply with the poverty of the workers and comes into conflict with John Thornton, the owner of a local mill, also a friend of her father. After an encounter with a group of strikers, in which Margaret attempts to protect Thornton from the violence, he proposes to her, telling her that he is in love with her; she rejects his proposal of marriage, mainly because she sees it as if it were out of obligation for what she had done. Later, he sees her with her fugitive brother, whom he mistakes for another suitor, and this creates further unresolved conflict. Margaret, once she believes she has lost his affection, begins to see him in another light, and eventually they are reunited. (Summary from Wikipedeia)

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273395 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Doctor's Wife Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon Narrator: Kirsten Wever Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 18 hours 2 minutes Release date: August 26, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.94 of Total 33 Ratings of Narrator: 4.13 of Total 16 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: This is one of the Victorian "Sensationist" Mary Elizabeth Braddon's many novels (best known among them: "Lady Audley's Secret"). It is extremely well written, fluid, humorous and, in places, self-mocking: one of the main characters is a Sensation Author. The motifs of the-woman-with-a-secret, adultery, and death are classic "sensationist" material. Yet this is also a self-consciously serious work of literature, taking on various social themes of the day. Specifically, Braddon presents the psychological struggle and cognitive dissonance which are the inevitable plight of the married middle-class woman with a strong sense of self, who is essentially constrained to live the life of her husband. In this, it echoes Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." The heroine, Isabel Sleaford, was driven early in her childhood to bury herself in, and develop her sense of self through, romantic novels and poetry. She is thus ill-adapted to the conventional, provincial structures and strictures laid upon her when she marries the very good and adoring, but also boring and unimaginative, Dr. George Gilbert. Isabel forms friendships with men (including her husband's best friend) who are more amenable to her romantic inclinations, and inevitably encounters social condemnation as a result. The book shows how life's tragedies and the world's cruel judgments shape Isabel, as she grows more mature, somewhat embittered, but also - true to her nature - beautifully resilient. (Summary by Kirsten Wever)

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/273391 to listen full audiobooks. Title: For the Term of His Natural Life Author: Marcus Clarke Narrator: LibriVox Volunteers Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 18 hours 22 minutes Release date: August 26, 2016 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.25 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 1 of Total 1 Genres: Historical Publisher's Summary: For the Term of his Natural Life, written by Marcus Clarke, was published in the Australian Journal between 1870 and 1872 (as His Natural Life), appearing as a novel in 1874. It is the best known novelisation of life as a convict in early Australian history. Described as a "ripping yarn", and at times relying on seemingly implausible coincidences, the story follows the fortunes of Rufus Dawes, a young man transported for a murder which he did not commit. The harsh and inhumane treatment meted out to the convicts, some of whom were transported for relatively minor crimes, is clearly conveyed. The conditions experienced by the convicts are graphically described. The novel was based on research by the author as well as a visit to the penal settlement of Port Arthur, Tasmania. (summary from Wikipedia)