Elizabeth McCracken has 7 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is Bowlaway.
Bowlaway
Summary
A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley. From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the 20th century - nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and 15 pounds of gold on her person - Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark - with Bertha its most notable resident. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon, it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills. In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of 20th-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family’s myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.
©2019 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
Summary
"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child. This audiobook is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from this kind of loss? Of course you don't - but you go on. And if you have ever experienced loss or love someone who has, you will hope to go on with the help and company of this remarkable audiobook. With humor and heart and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love, and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.
©2008 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2008 Hachette Audio
Niagara Falls All Over Again
Summary
Sometimes in life, opposites are drawn to each other; somehow, each providing the other with something they don't have, but desperately need. National Book Award finalist Elizabeth McCracken pens this graceful, moving tale of an unlikely pairing of two men and their lifelong partnership in show business. Drawn to Vaudeville from a Jewish upbringing in a small town outside Des Moines, Mose Sharp meets Rocky Carter at a comedy club. Missing his usual sideman, Carter enlists Sharp to participate in his routine. On stage, Carter's hilarious emotional exaggeration and absurdity come into their own with Sharp's deadpan delivery, and just like that, the inseparable duo of Carter and Sharp is born. From Broadway to Hollywood in 1939, the duo finds great success in movies before a series of unforgivable acts tears them apart. Filled with compassion and beauty, Niagara Falls All Over Again builds up intensely before life's toll harkens the bittersweet unraveling of Carter and Sharp. With the experienced voice of veteran narrator George Guidall, McCracken's prose finds its perfect complement.
©2001 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2002 Recorded Books, LLC
The Souvenir Museum
Summary
A Most Anticipated Book From: OprahMag.com * Refinery 29 * Seattle Times * LitHub * Houston Chronicle * The Millions * Buzzfeed One of the most treasured writers of our day, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear. With sentences that crackle and spark and showcase her trademark wit, McCracken traces how our closely held desires - for intimacy, atonement, comfort - bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time. Her characters embark on journeys that leave them indelibly changed - and so do her fans. The Souvenir Museum showcases the talents of one of our finest contemporary writers as she tenderly takes the pulse of our collective and individual lives.
©2021 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
Thunderstruck & Other Stories
Summary
From the author of the beloved novel The Giant's House comes a beautiful new story collection. In "Property", a young scholar, grieving the sudden death of his wife, decides to refurbish a rental house by removing his landlord's possessions. In "Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey", the household of a successful filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject, whose trust he betrayed. In "The Lost & Found Department of Greater Boston", the manager of a grocery store becomes fixated on the famous case of a missing local woman. And in "Thunderstruck", a family makes a quixotic decision to flee to Paris for a summer, only to find their lives altered in an unimaginable way by their teenage daughter's risky behavior.
©2014 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2014 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Giant's House
Summary
National Book Award finalist. The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod, 26-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt - the "over-tall" 11-year-old boy who's the talk of the town - walks into her library and changes her life. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship, but nevertheless, they find their lives intertwined in ways neither one could have predicted. And as James grows - six-foot-five at age 12, then seven feet, then eight - so does Peggy's heart and their most singular romance. This production includes a bonus excerpt from Elizabeth McCracken’s next audiobook, Bowlaway.
©1996 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry
Summary
The singular, enchanting debut story collection from Elizabeth McCracken, now back as part of Ecco’s “Art of the Story” series and with a new introduction from the author. Called “astonishingly assured” by The Guardian, the nine stories that make up Elizabeth McCracken’s debut story collection deal with oddball characters doing their very best to forge connections with those around them. In “It’s Bad Luck to Die”, a woman marries an older tattoo artist and finds comfort in agreeing to act as a canvas for his most elaborate work. “Some Have Entertained Angels, Unaware” follows a young girl as she comes face-to-face with a cast of eccentrics her recently widowed father has invited to live in their expansive but dilapidated home. And in the title story, a young man and his wife are perplexed when an outspoken old woman shows up on their doorstep for a visit, claiming to be a distant aunt, even though she can’t be traced on a family tree. At once captivating and offbeat, Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry is a dazzling showcase of the early years of Elizabeth McCracken’s prodigious talent.
©2019 Elizabeth McCracken (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers