The Children
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Gretchen Mol
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By:
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Ann Leary
About this listen
From New York Times best-selling author Ann Leary comes the captivating story of a wealthy but unconventional New England family, told from the perspective of a reclusive 29-year-old who has a secret (and famous) life on the Internet.
Charlotte Maynard rarely leaves her mother's home, the sprawling Connecticut lake house that belonged to her late stepfather, Whit Whitman, and the generations of Whitmans before him. While Charlotte and her sister, Sally, grew up at Lakeside, their stepbrothers, Spin and Perry, were welcomed as weekend guests. Now the grown boys own the estate, which Joan occupies by their grace - and a provision in the family trust.
When Spin, the youngest and favorite of all the children, brings his fiancée home for the summer, the entire family is intrigued. The beautiful and accomplished Laurel Atwood breathes new life into this often comically rarefied world. But as the wedding draws near and flaws surface in the family's polite veneer, an array of simmering resentments and unfortunate truths is exposed.
With remarkable wit and insight, Ann Leary pulls back the curtain on one blended family as they are forced to grapple with the assets and liabilities - both material and psychological - left behind by their wonderfully flawed patriarch.
©2016 Ann Leary (P)2016 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Get Lucky
- By: Katherine Center
- Narrated by: Morgan Hallett
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Filled with wit and heart, Get Lucky by Katherine Center explores the deep bonds of sisterhood. Sarah Harper’s whole world revolved around her job at a New York advertising agency before an email snafu got her fired. Now she’s seeking refuge at her sister Mackie’s home in Houston. But Mackie, who’s unable to get pregnant, is also down-and-out these days. So Sarah decides to do something good and becomes a surrogate mother.
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Finding what matters most in life
- By bizymom7 on 10-12-24
By: Katherine Center
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Summer of Two Wishes
- By: Julia London
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Macy Lockhart’s life shattered in a moment with the news that her husband, Finn – serving in the military overseas – has been killed in the line of duty. Their ardent marriage is over, leaving Macy alone, empty, directionless. But while she tries to sustain herself with memories of Finn, who made her and their small Texas ranch the center of his life, it is wealthy Wyatt Clark who slowly brings joy back into her life - until the day that Finn, miraculously spared from death, returns home to claim his bride….
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Excellent!
- By Lady M on 05-01-13
By: Julia London
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Falling Together
- A Novel
- By: Marisa de los Santos
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s been six years since Pen Calloway watched her best friends walk out of her life. And through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the vicissitudes of single motherhood, she has never stopped missing them. Pen, Cat, and Will met on their first day of college and formed what seemed like a magical and lifelong bond, only to see their friendship break apart amid the realities of adulthood. When, after years of silence, Cat - the bewitching, charismatic center of their group - e-mails Pen and Will with an urgent request to meet at their college reunion, they can’t refuse.
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Narrator's breathy voice a turn off
- By Amy on 10-16-11
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The Island House
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Every summer since college, twenty-nine-year-old Jenny has traded the familiarity of the Midwest for the allure of Nantucket. Now an established university professor in Kansas City, she finds herself caught between two lifestyles and two very different men. She chooses Nantucket and the glamorous life she associates with it, unaware that the summer will take an unexpected turn, and she will have to let her heart decide what it truly wants.
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I love Nancy Thayer's style of writing
- By L.W. on 07-31-16
By: Nancy Thayer
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Summer at Willow Lake
- The Lakeshore Chronicles, Book 1
- By: Susan Wiggs
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Real estate expert Olivia Bellamy reluctantly trades a trendy Manhattan summer for her family's old resort camp in the Catskills, where her primary task will be renovating the bungalow colony for her grandparents, who want one last summer together filled with fun, friends and family. A posh resort in its heyday, the camp is now in disarray and Olivia is forced to hire contractor Connor Davis - a still-smoldering flame from her own summers at camp.
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Finding Love at Summer Camp
- By Pamela Dale Foster on 02-13-15
By: Susan Wiggs
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Disgruntled
- By: Asali Solomon
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she calls her father - a housepainter-slash-philosopher - "Baba" or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations "from the Creator, for the Martyrs" and discuss "the community".
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Loved It!!!
- By ayodele higgs on 05-20-15
By: Asali Solomon
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Just Fly Away
- By: Andrew McCarthy
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A debut novel about one girl's discovery of family secrets, first love, the limits of forgiveness, and finding one's way in the world, written with wisdom and sympathy by the best-selling memoirist, actor, and director. When 15-year-old Lucy Willows discovers that her father has a child from a brief affair, an eight-year-old boy named Thomas who lives in her own suburban New Jersey town, she begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her family and her life.
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none
- By Rick on 04-06-17
By: Andrew McCarthy
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Love Walked In
- By: Marisa de los Santos
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos crafts an irresistibly touching debut novel. Love Walked In is a contemporary tale, steeped in nostalgic, cinematic charm, of love in all its forms. Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia Brown appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But it is Martin's connection to 11-year-old Clare Hobbes that touches Cornelia's heart in ways she never imagined.
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Dreadful audio quality
- By Marenghi on 09-16-11
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The Beach at Painter's Cove
- A Novel
- By: Shelley Noble
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Whitaker family's Connecticut mansion, Muses by the Sea, has always been a haven for artists, a hotbed of creativity, extravagances, and the occasional scandal. Art patrons for generations, the Whitakers supported strangers but drained the life out of each other. Now, after being estranged for years, four generations of Whitaker women find themselves once again at the Muses. Leo, the Whitaker matriarch, lives in the rambling mansion.
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A new author for me who I will read again!
- By Randi shelton on 06-22-17
By: Shelley Noble
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Breakwater Bay
- By: Shelley Noble
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Preservationist Meri Hollis loves her latest project, restoring one of Newport's forgotten Gilded Age mansions. And with summer approaching, she'll be able to spend more time with her Gran on the Rhode Island shore. She has a great job, a loving family and she's pretty sure her boyfriend is going to propose on her thirtieth birthday. But everything Meri believes about family, happiness, truth, and love is shattered when her family's darkest secret is exposed.
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Wasted Potential
- By Rusty on 03-15-15
By: Shelley Noble
What listeners say about The Children
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- robin
- 06-09-16
Disappointing ,
This reader of this flawed novel has a flat, almost monotone voice.
Very unappealing, and detracts from the story.
A different narrator might have helped the book to seem less simplistic than it actually was. Much of the conversation sounded like it was from a third grade reading manual, because it was rendered so stiffly. The story seemed to end midstream. Without giving the story away, the characters who had been lied to at the outset might have come together for an ingenious revenge scheme. Additional plot development would have enhanced the book.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Ari
- 06-04-18
incredible narrator, vivid characters and setting
Ann Leary really gets human behavior, and writes the most affecting character-driven stories I’ve read. The narrator gives a full performance and brings life to this fascinating cast of characters and New England lake house. Highly recommend.
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- joan
- 07-04-16
Strange ending
I got into each of the characters in this book, enjoyed the narration but was a bit disappointed in the abrupt ending, which didn't take the same easy pace as the rest of the book and felt rushed.
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- lizy Gaines
- 06-13-18
made me mad make me laugh make me smile
it took me awhile to keep all the characters straight in the very beginning and sometimes that is something I find with an audible book that I don't find with a book that I'm reading. but by the second chapter or so I had a picture of all the characters and could keep them straight. I like them all really like the book didn't want the ending to be what it was but there it was. sometimes that's the best indication of a really good book!
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- Nonnieto3boys
- 04-01-22
Well Performed Story
This story is about a very quirky family on a lake in northwest Connecticut. From the beginning, you knew something is amiss with these people, (while calls their mother be her first name?), but the turns the story takes are surprising and heart-breaking. Ultimately, they are revealed to all be rather disfunctional, each in there own way. And then an outsider joins them and things unravel quickly from there.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Liz
- 02-18-18
Great characterization... not much happens
Like many reviewers I loved 'The Good House' and bought this because of that.
The characters didn't disappoint, the set up is good (though I did get a bit annoyed with everyone's lack of awareness about their weak financial situation - living in a house owned by someone else).
The story setup is believable and the day to day reasonable. but then like life... it just sort of meanders along. There are major events right at the end, and no-one seems particularly upset or distressed. There's a flatness that could have been fixed with more tension. It felt as though Ann Leary had perhaps lost interest at the end and simply tied up all the loose ends quickly.
It's still an enjoyable read and I'll read more by her. But if this is your first Ann Leary - get the Good House. it's compelling in a way this isnt'
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4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-21-16
Incredibly boring
Made it to chapter 11 and just couldn't listen to any more. I usually love this authors books but not this one.
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1 person found this helpful
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- PhyllisD
- 07-25-16
not satisfying at all
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Why would I want a friend to experience this disappointment, especially the ending; and there doesn't seem to be any point, anything to learn from the characters' experiences.
Have you listened to any of Gretchen Mol’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Gretchen Mol was the best thing about this listen.
Did The Children inspire you to do anything?
Absolutely not.
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- M. Burton
- 12-23-22
Fun and suspenseful!
Enjoyed the story, the setting of the story and the narration. Part thriller , part romance . A must listen!
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- JillHen
- 02-18-17
Brilliant family comedy/drama
Ann Leary knows what she's doing. Take a few interesting characters with amusing flaws/quirks, put them in a challenging situation, add an interloper, money, unanswered questions, resentment and humor, and then turn the whole thing upside-down. Witty at times, dark at others. Not only is this a great character study, it's got a riveting plot too.
The level of depth takes this book from good to great. A lively story that kept me engaged, entertained and which moved me deeply.
Thank you Gretchen Mol for your superb narration. Many audiobooks suffer from narration that does not serve the book as much as the performer's ego. Overacting is such a turnoff. Finally, a narrator who gives us a book rather than a self-indulgent performance. Five stars.
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13 people found this helpful