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The Swan's Nest
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Nicola F. Delgado
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
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Publisher's summary
A tender and engrossing historical novel about the unlikely love affair between two great 19th-century poets, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.
On a bleak January day in 1845, a poet who had been confined to her room for four years by recurrent illness received a letter from a writer she secretly idolized but had never seen. “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” Robert Browning wrote, “and I love you too.”
Elizabeth Barrett was ecstatic. She was famous for her poetry but completely cut off from the kind of international travel that Browning used to fuel his obscure, unsuccessful, innovative poems, one of which was written from a murderer’s point of view. They began an affectionate correspondence, but Elizabeth kept delaying a visit. What would happen when he saw her in person? What was Robert really like? Could she persuade her father and brothers that he was honorable, even though she had never met his family? And what would happen if she gave in to Robert’s wild proposal that they go to Italy and see if the sun could cure her?
McNeal brilliantly tells the story of how Robert and Elizabeth fell in love with each other’s words and shocked her conservative, close-knit family and the literary world. Sensitively and lyrically written, as rich as the lovers' own poetry, The Swan's Nest will sweep up listeners in the triumphant story of two people forced to choose between a safe, stable life and the love they felt for each other.
Critic reviews
“Let me count the ways I love The Swan’s Nest: as a transporting romance, as a meticulous recreation of history, as a compelling examination of social hierarchies, and as an expose of the evil that can lurk behind fortunes. It’s a bold feat to enter the minds of geniuses, but Barrett and Browning, as well as the wonderful cast of supporting characters, are as believable as they are beautifully written. Laura McNeal has constructed a gorgeous, faithful, and gripping rendering of poetry’s most enduring love story.”—Nina de Gramont, author of international bestseller The Christie Affair
“What a lovely, lyrical novel this is! Tender in its sympathies, meticulous in its research, and mercifully attentive to the fraught conditions of love, loneliness, and loss, it seems like an antidote to so much contemporary fiction. The restorative romance and marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning is familiar to many readers of British poetry, but Laura McNeal has made it feel so new and fresh and nourishing, like a sea breeze from the West Indies cleansing away the soot and smoke of 19th century London."—Ron Hansen, author of The Kid
"Laura McNeal is one of my favorite writers and The Swan’s Nest is a stunning accomplishment. Assiduously researched, gorgeously brought to life, this literary love story will keep you up all night.”—Lily King, author of Five Tuesdays in Winter
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- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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They were granddaughters of Queen Victoria and two of the most beautiful princesses in Europe. Princesses Alix and Ella were destined to wed well and wisely. But while their grandmother wants to join them to the English and German royal families, the sisters fall in love with Russia—and the Romanovs.
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Captivating and delightful
- By Anonymous on 03-16-24
By: Clare McHugh
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The Warm Hands of Ghosts
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Arden
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch, January LaVoy, Katherine Arden
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, Laura receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital, where she soon hears whispers about haunted trenches and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion.
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WW 1 and the Apocolypse
- By Sam Pakan on 02-27-24
By: Katherine Arden
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The Practice House
- By: Laura McNeal
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Nineteen-year-old Aldine McKenna is stuck at home with her sister and aunt in a Scottish village in 1929 when two Mormon missionaries ring the doorbell. Aldine's sister converts and moves to America to marry, and Aldine follows, hoping to find the life she's meant to lead and the person she's meant to love. In New York, Aldine answers an ad soliciting a teacher for a one-room schoolhouse in a place she can't possibly imagine: drought-stricken Kansas.
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Well, written, interesting, different family saga
- By NMwritergal on 05-06-17
By: Laura McNeal
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The Gambler's Game
- Based on the True Story of The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
- By: James C Darnborough
- Narrated by: Kevin Clay
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the twilight of the 19th century, as the Old West collides with the opulence of the Gilded Age, one man embarks on a journey that will redefine his life. The Gambler's Game is a captivating historical fiction saga that follows the extraordinary life of a mid-western baseball player turned high-stakes gambler. His audacious spirit leads him from the dust chocked plains to the refined ambiance of English garden parties and the allure of Belle Epoque Monte Carlo.
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Loads of fun!
- By Jim on 02-15-24
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Welcome to Forever
- By: Nathan Tavares
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Fox is a memory editor—one of the best—gifted with the skill to create real life in the digital world. When he wakes up in Field of Reeds Centre for Memory Reconstruction with no idea how he got there, the therapists tell him he was a victim in a terrorist bombing by Khadija Banks, the pioneer of memory editing technology turned revolutionary. A bombing which shredded the memory archives of all its victims, including his husband Gabe. Thrust into reconstructions of his memories exploded from the fragments that survived the blast, Fox tries to rebuild his life, his marriage and himself.
By: Nathan Tavares
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Between You and Us
- A Novel
- By: Kendra Broekhuis
- Narrated by: Anna Caputo
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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When Leona Warlon heads across the city to meet her husband, David, for a rare dinner out, she hopes they can share a moment of relief after their year of loss. But Leona quickly realizes this is no ordinary date night. She hasn’t just stepped into an upscale ristorante; she’s stepped into a different version of her life. One in which her marriage is no longer tender, in which her days are pressured by her powerful in-laws, and in which her precious baby girl lived.
By: Kendra Broekhuis
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The Lost Book of Bonn
- A Novel
- By: Brianna Labuskes
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Germany, 1946: Emmy Clarke is a librarian not a soldier. But that doesn’t stop the Library of Congress from sending her overseas to Germany to help the Monuments Men retrieve and catalog precious literature that was plundered by the Nazis. The Offenbach Archival Depot and its work may get less attention than returning art to its rightful owners, but for Emmy, who sees the personalized messages on the inside of the books and the notes in margins of pages, it feels just as important.
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Enthralling!
- By Darcey Little on 04-05-24
By: Brianna Labuskes
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Pride and Joy
- A Novel
- By: Louisa Onomé
- Narrated by: Yinka Ladeinde
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Joy Okafor is overwhelmed. Recently divorced, a life coach whose phone won’t stop ringing, and ever the dutiful Nigerian daughter, Joy has planned every aspect of her mother’s seventieth birthday weekend on her own. As the Okafors slowly begin to arrive, Mama Mary goes to take a nap. But when the grandkids go to wake her, they find that she isn’t sleeping after all. Refusing to believe that her sister is gone-gone, Auntie Nancy declares that she has had a premonition that Mama Mary will rise again like Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday.
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A dysfunctional family.
- By Carol on 03-31-24
By: Louisa Onomé
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What the Mountains Remember
- By: Joy Callaway
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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April 1913—Belle Newbold hasn’t seen mountains for seven years—since her father died in a mining accident and her mother married gasoline magnate, Shipley Newbold. But when her stepfather’s business acquaintance, Henry Ford, invites the family on one of his famous Vagabonds camping tours, she is forced to face the hills once again—primarily in order to reunite with her future fiancé, owner of the land the Vagabonds are using for their campsite, a man she’s only met once before. It is a veritable arranged marriage, but she prefers it that way.
By: Joy Callaway
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What listeners say about The Swan's Nest
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- westernMA
- 03-28-24
The most enchanting interlude
Nothing compares to the sensations of time travel, and McNeal constructs the world of the Barrett-Brownings so completely, spins a web for the reader with such gorgeous detail, that you are wholly transported. I feel I've been to these times and places, not just heard about them. The intimacy of the love story, and the tides of family and the politics of the time that surround it, are beautifully balanced in such a way that I could not put it down. Narration is expert and added a lovely layer to the experience of the book.
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