Get a free audiobook
Saint X
People who bought this also bought...
-
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
- A Novel
- Written by: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones
- Narrated by: Beata Pozniak
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then, a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon, other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind....
-
-
Exquisite blend of narrative and philosophy
- By canuckles on 2019-10-11
-
The Best American Short Stories 2019
- The Best American Series ®
- Written by: Anthony Doerr - editor, Heidi Pitlor - editor
- Narrated by: Scott Shepherd, Gabra Zackman, Ali Ahn, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Number-one New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019.
-
The Great Pretender
- The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
- Written by: Susannah Cahalan
- Narrated by: Christie Moreau, Susannah Cahalan
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness - how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people - sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society - went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.
-
The Grammarians
- A Novel
- Written by: Cathleen Schine
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war, absurdly but passionately, over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition.
-
Red at the Bone
- A Novel
- Written by: Jacqueline Woodson
- Narrated by: Jacqueline Woodson, full cast
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative 10 times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.
-
Conviction
- Written by: Denise Mina
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life explodes starts off like all the days before: Packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone. Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own - a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of international conspiracy. But this case actually is Anna's problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life.
-
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
- A Novel
- Written by: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones
- Narrated by: Beata Pozniak
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then, a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon, other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind....
-
-
Exquisite blend of narrative and philosophy
- By canuckles on 2019-10-11
-
The Best American Short Stories 2019
- The Best American Series ®
- Written by: Anthony Doerr - editor, Heidi Pitlor - editor
- Narrated by: Scott Shepherd, Gabra Zackman, Ali Ahn, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Number-one New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019.
-
The Great Pretender
- The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
- Written by: Susannah Cahalan
- Narrated by: Christie Moreau, Susannah Cahalan
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness - how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people - sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society - went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.
-
The Grammarians
- A Novel
- Written by: Cathleen Schine
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war, absurdly but passionately, over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition.
-
Red at the Bone
- A Novel
- Written by: Jacqueline Woodson
- Narrated by: Jacqueline Woodson, full cast
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative 10 times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.
-
Conviction
- Written by: Denise Mina
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life explodes starts off like all the days before: Packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone. Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own - a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of international conspiracy. But this case actually is Anna's problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life.
Publisher's Summary
Hailed as a "marvel of a book" and "brilliant and unflinching," Alexis Schaitkin’s stunning debut, Saint X, is a haunting portrait of grief, obsession, and the bond between two sisters never truly given the chance to know one another.
Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men - employees at the resort - are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.
Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth - not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister? At seven, Claire had been barely old enough to know her: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of 18 at a turbulent moment of identity formation.
As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will reveal the truth, an unlikely attachment develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by the same tragedy.
For fans of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, Saint X is a flawlessly drawn and deeply moving story that culminates in an emotionally powerful ending.
Praise for Saint X:
"Here is a marvel of a book, a kaleidoscopic examination of race and privilege, family and self, told with the propulsive, kinetic focus of a crime thriller. Brilliant and unflinching, Saint X marks the debut of a stunningly gifted writer. I simply couldn’t stop reading." (Chang-Rae Lee, author of On Such a Full Sea)
“Richly atmospheric, by turns coolly satiric and warmly romantic, Alexis Schaitkin’s brilliant debut novel Saint X imagines a chorus of voices in the aftermath of the alleged rape/murder of a privileged American girl vacationing in an exotic Caribbean country. Part ’true-crime’ thriller and part coming-of-age novel narrated by the deceased girl’s younger sister, Saint X is irresistibly suspenseful and canny." (Joyce Carol Oates)