Alison Lurie has 7 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 9 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 6 ratings. The most-rated is Foreign Affairs.
Foreign Affairs
Summary
Virginia Miner, a 50-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children's folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel. Also in London is Vinnie's colleague, Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to. Both American, both abroad, and both achingly lonely, Vinnie and Fred play out their confused alienation and dizzying romantic liaisons in Alison Lurie's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Smartly written, poignant, and witty, Foreign Affairs remains an enduring comic masterpiece.
©2006 Alison Lurie (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
Real People
Summary
At an artistic Garden of Eden, one writer finds that serpents lurk in every corner. The mansion is called Illyria, but for the writers and artists who flock there each summer, it may as well be paradise. Away from family, friends, and ordinary responsibilities, the creative spirit can flower, nurtured by the company of other artistic souls. Janet Belle Smith's husband doesn't understand why she can't write at home - or really, for that matter, why she must write at all - but for Janet, the reason is clear. Only in Illyria can she be herself. But as the writer mingles with her fellow artists - including a Marxist novelist, a Beat poet, a wild-man sculptor - she begins to fear that the "real" her isn't who she expected, and Illyria is not the peaceful kingdom it appears to be. This creative paradise is rotting from inside out, and if Janet doesn't move quickly, she'll be trapped in the rubble when the walls come tumbling down.
©1969 Alison Lurie (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Last Resort
Summary
At the end of his tether, a writer travels to Key West with his wife. She's hoping to cheer him up, but he's hoping for something more fatal... Every schoolboy in America knows the work of Wilkie Walker. A pioneering naturalist, he won fame and fortune with his accessible nature books. But by the time he turns 70, his renown is nearly gone. Late at night, he sits up torturing himself with fears that his career was a waste, his talent is gone, and his body is shot through with cancer. His wife Jenny, 25 years younger than Wilkie, can tell only that he is out of sorts. She has no idea her husband is on the verge of giving up on life. When Jenny suggests spending the winter in Key West, Wilkie goes along with it. After all, if you need to plan a fatal "accident", Florida is a perfectly good place to do so. And when they touch down in the sunshine state, the Walkers find it's not too late to live life - or end it - however they damn well please.
©1998 Alison Lurie (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Love and Friendship
Summary
Faculty wife Emily Stockwell Turner is beautiful, rich, and principled. However, five years in a marriage devoid of passion is enough to propel Emmy, despite her principles, into an affair with silver-tongued Will Thomas, a self-confessed libertine. The shocking, unforeseen consequences of their affair shatter Emmy's most cherished delusions about friendship, romance, and the ties that bind.
©1962 Alison Lurie (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Only Children
Summary
In the midst of the Great Depression, two families spend a holiday weekend together--but while their daughters cement their friendship, their parents tear their marriages apart. Dozing in the backseat of her father's car, Mary Ann Hubbard is the happiest eight-year-old in the country. It's 1935, and she and her parents are going to spend Fourth of July weekend with her headmistress and the Zimmerns, whose daughter, Lolly, is Mary Ann's best friend from school. While the two little girls frolic in the attic, endowing the rambling old house with wonder, creativity, and imagination, their parents are downstairs, mired in all the pleasure, pain, and occasional childishness of adulthood. As an affair threatens to tear the two families apart, Lolly and Mary Ann retreat further into playtime. By the end of the weekend, the girls will begin to realize that becoming an adult and growing up can be two very different things.
©1988 Alison Lurie (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Nowhere City
Summary
A young couple from New England's Ivy League plunges into a culture clash during a year in Los Angeles. When his mentor at Harvard University suddenly leaves for Washington, Paul Cattleman finds himself adrift in the wilds of academia. He's lost his fellowship position for the fall semester, can find work only in what he considers to be intellectual cesspits--schools that would brand the young history professor as forever unsuitable for the Ivy League--and is one thesis short of a PhD. Rather than doom his career, he takes a temporary job in Los Angeles, a city whose superficial charms signal an adventure. He is ready to make the best of his year out west. The only thing holding him back is his wife. Katherine is a New Englander through and through, and as soon as she steps into the LA smog, she knows this transition will be a struggle. What Paul sees as fun she considers vulgar. But while Los Angeles may be a cultural wasteland, this East Coast girl will find that West Coast pleasures can be quite a lot of fun.
©1965 Alison Lurie (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Imaginary Friends
Summary
Tom McCann, a professor of sociology, and his young assistant, Roger, infiltrate a religious cult group based in New York State, deciding it will make excellent study material. But they find it hard to maintain their deception, especially as Verena, the cult's leader, is an attractive woman.
©1967 Alison Lurie (P)2014 Audible Inc.