Listen free for 30 days
-
Pleasantville
- Narrated by: J D Jackson
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Categories: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thriller & Suspense
People who bought this also bought...
-
Heaven, My Home
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas gang captain goes missing, Ranger Darren Mathews has no choice but to investigate the crime. Following the election of Donald Trump, a new wave of racial violence has swept the state. Dark, swampy and filled with skeletal trees, Caddo Lake is so large it crosses into Lousiana. This is deep country and the rule of law doesn't mean much to the Brotherhood, beyond what it can do for them.
-
-
Another good story
- By DartmoorDiva on 27-04-20
-
Black Water Rising
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife’s birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora’s Box. Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darkest sins and resolved to make a fresh start. His impulsive act out on the bayou is heroic, but it puts Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him is practice, his family and even his life.
-
Bluebird, Bluebird
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Southern fables usually go the other way around. A white woman is killed or harmed in some way, real or imagined, and then, like the moon follows the sun, a black man ends up dead. But when it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules - a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger working the backwoods towns of Highway 59, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about his home state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.
-
-
Excellent, yet hugely depressing
- By DartmoorDiva on 08-10-19
-
The Cutting Season
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: Lachele Carl
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just after dawn Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the historic plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for the past four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug by the fence bordering the sugar cane fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. Not long after, he calls her to say it's something else. Something terrible. A young woman lying face down in a shallow grave, her throat cut clean.
-
-
Not the best buy...
- By Amazon Customer on 03-11-12
-
Slow Horses
- Slough House, Book 1
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.
-
-
More Smiley than Pilgrim
- By Robert on 17-08-17
-
The Survivors
- By: Jane Harper
- Narrated by: Stephen Shanahan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that haunts him still resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home. Kieran's parents are struggling in a community which is bound, for better or worse, to the sea that is both a lifeline and a threat. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge in the murder investigation that follows.
-
-
Another masterpiece
- By daisyrock on 27-09-20
-
Heaven, My Home
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas gang captain goes missing, Ranger Darren Mathews has no choice but to investigate the crime. Following the election of Donald Trump, a new wave of racial violence has swept the state. Dark, swampy and filled with skeletal trees, Caddo Lake is so large it crosses into Lousiana. This is deep country and the rule of law doesn't mean much to the Brotherhood, beyond what it can do for them.
-
-
Another good story
- By DartmoorDiva on 27-04-20
-
Black Water Rising
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife’s birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora’s Box. Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darkest sins and resolved to make a fresh start. His impulsive act out on the bayou is heroic, but it puts Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him is practice, his family and even his life.
-
Bluebird, Bluebird
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Southern fables usually go the other way around. A white woman is killed or harmed in some way, real or imagined, and then, like the moon follows the sun, a black man ends up dead. But when it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules - a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger working the backwoods towns of Highway 59, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about his home state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.
-
-
Excellent, yet hugely depressing
- By DartmoorDiva on 08-10-19
-
The Cutting Season
- By: Attica Locke
- Narrated by: Lachele Carl
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just after dawn Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the historic plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for the past four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug by the fence bordering the sugar cane fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. Not long after, he calls her to say it's something else. Something terrible. A young woman lying face down in a shallow grave, her throat cut clean.
-
-
Not the best buy...
- By Amazon Customer on 03-11-12
-
Slow Horses
- Slough House, Book 1
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.
-
-
More Smiley than Pilgrim
- By Robert on 17-08-17
-
The Survivors
- By: Jane Harper
- Narrated by: Stephen Shanahan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that haunts him still resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home. Kieran's parents are struggling in a community which is bound, for better or worse, to the sea that is both a lifeline and a threat. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge in the murder investigation that follows.
-
-
Another masterpiece
- By daisyrock on 27-09-20
-
House of Correction
- By: Nicci French
- Narrated by: Gemma Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She’s a murderer. Everyone knows she killed Stuart Rees - why else would his dead body be found in her shed? So now Tabitha is in prison, awaiting trial. Coming back to the remote coastal village where she grew up was a mistake. She didn’t fit in then, and she doesn’t fit in now. That day is such a blur, she can’t remember clearly what happened. There is something she is missing, something important. She only knows one thing.
-
-
Absolutely Fantastic
- By miss leanne glasspool on 01-10-20
-
The Less Dead
- By: Denise Mina
- Narrated by: Katie Leung
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Margo goes in search of her birth mother for the first time, she meets her aunt Nikki instead. Margo learns that her mother, Susan, was a sex worker murdered soon after Margo's adoption. To this day, Susan's killer has never been found. Nikki asks Margo for help. She has received threatening and haunting letters from the murderer for decades. She is determined to find him, but she can't do it alone.... A brilliant, thought-provoking and heart-wrenching new thriller about identity and the value of a life.
-
-
Great but...
- By Lyro8 on 25-08-20
-
Silver
- By: Chris Hammer
- Narrated by: Nicholas Osmond
- Length: 17 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For half a lifetime, journalist Martin Scarsden has run from his past. But now there is no escaping. He'd vowed never to return to his hometown, Port Silver, and its traumatic memories. But now his new partner, Mandy Blonde, has inherited an old house in the seaside town, and Martin knows their chance of a new life together won't come again. Martin arrives to find his best friend from school days brutally murdered and Mandy the chief suspect. With the police curiously reluctant to pursue other suspects, Martin goes searching for the killer. And finds the past waiting for him.
-
-
Pretty laboured. struggled to finish
- By AmyJackson on 29-03-20
-
Snow
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: Stanley Townsend
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the discovery of the body of a well-loved parish priest at Ballyglass House - the Co Wexford family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family - Detective Inspector St John Strafford is called in from Dublin to investigate. Facing obstruction from all angles, Strafford is determined to identify the murderer. But, as the snow continues to fall over this ever expanding mystery, the people of Ballyglass are equally determined to keep their secrets.
-
-
Nothing new or interesting here.
- By the typist on 02-10-20
-
Hamnet
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Daisy Donovan
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.
-
-
Narrator fights writing and wins (sadly)
- By Leaf Green on 20-07-20
-
Scrublands
- By: Chris Hammer
- Narrated by: Rupert Degas
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dead river. A dying town. A killer's secrets.... In an isolated country town ravaged by drought, a charismatic young priest opens fire on his congregation, killing five men before being shot dead himself. A year later, journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals don't fit with the accepted version of events. Just as Martin believes he is making headway, a shocking discovery rocks the town.
-
-
Best in ages.
- By Robert E. on 07-10-18
-
Summerwater
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Morven Christie
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the longest day of the summer, 12 people sit cooped up with their families in a faded Scottish cabin park. The endless rain leaves them with little to do but watch the other residents. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a retired couple reminisces about neighbours long since moved on; a teenage boy braves the dark waters of the loch in his red kayak. Each person is wrapped in their own cares but increasingly alert to the makeshift community around them.
-
-
Thoughts for our fractured times - brilliant
- By Rachel Redford on 29-08-20
-
The Axeman's Jazz
- By: Ray Celestin
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New Orleans, 1919. As a dark serial killer - The Axeman - stalks the city, three individuals set out to unmask him. As Michael, Luca and Ida each draw closer to discovering the killer's identity, the Axeman himself will issue a challenge to the people of New Orleans: play jazz or risk becoming the next victim. And as the case builds to its crescendo, the sky will darken and a great storm will loom over the city.
-
-
Promising story but poor narration
- By Christine on 02-09-16
-
Love After Love
- By: Ingrid Persaud
- Narrated by: Ingrid Persaud
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household, happy in their differences, as they build a home together. Home: the place where your navel string is buried, keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world. Happy and loving they are, until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.
-
-
I loved this book from start to finish, brilliant
- By stolen from me on 12-04-20
-
March Violets
- By: Philip Kerr
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and he is sucked further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. The year is 1936 and Berlin is preparing for the Olympic Games. Some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realise that they should have left while they could, and Bernie himself has been hired by a wealthy industrialist to investigate two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party.
-
-
Traditional detective idioms in an unusual setting
- By chris on 19-01-09
-
The Lincoln Lawyer
- By: Michael Connelly
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mickey Haller is a Lincoln lawyer, a criminal defence attorney who operates out of the back of his car, a Lincoln, taking whatever cases the system throws in his path. He's been in the business a long time, and he knows just how to work it. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. The evidence mounts on the defence's side, and Haller might even be in the rare position of defending a client who is actually innocent.
-
-
The Lincoln Lawyer
- By Mrs Andrea Lee on 30-06-18
-
The Darkness
- By: Ragnar Jónasson
- Narrated by: Amanda Redman
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson. A young woman, an asylum seeker from Russia, is found murdered on the seaweed-covered rocks of the Vatnsleysuströnd in Iceland. Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir of the Reykjavik Police is called to investigate this - the final case in her career before she is forced into retirement. When Hulda starts to ask questions, it isn't long before she realises that no-one can be trusted and that no-one is telling the whole truth.
-
-
engaging
- By Claire Nolan on 21-10-18
Summary
It's 1996, and in Houston a mayoral election is looming. As usual the campaign focuses on Pleasantville. Axel Hathorne, former chief of police, was all set to become Houston's first black mayor. But his lead is slipping thanks to Sandy Wolcott, a defence lawyer. And then, just as the competition intensifies, a girl goes missing, apparently while canvassing for Axel. And when her body is found, Axel's nephew is charged with her murder.
Critic reviews
More from the same
What listeners say about Pleasantville
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- bookylady
- 14-07-16
Law, Politics & Murder in Houston, Texas. 5*
Any additional comments?
If you like a sophisticated murder/police/whodunnit type of book then give this one a try. Beautifully written and with a great plot,this kept me listening for hours at a time. A great story and well told by the narrator.
Pleasantville deserves all of the hype it has received and I'm not surprised that it made the longlist for the 2016 Baileys Prize for fiction.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- DartmoorDiva
- 31-10-17
Excellent
What a great book. Beautifully written and beautifully read, I was hooked from the outset. Attica Locke is a fine writer, keeping a masterful grip on her storyline and maintaining a steady level of intrigue. The lack of any gratuitous violence and bad language was a surprising bonus, just proving that neither is necessary when the plot and writing are this good. J D Jackson did a fine job in his narration, beautifully nuanced and pleasingly consistent. I will definitely be reading more from this writer.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 12-10-18
slow
just took many attempts to listen to . it was a struggle to finish .
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ja
- 26-08-18
Too Many Characters
Too many characters to follow the several subplots running in parallel with the main plot, which itself is tenuous. Much repetition and I found it difficult to empathise with the protagonist Jay, who I felt was two-dimensional, unlike the accused Neil. The narrator struggled to change his voice to accommodate at least twenty people, but did his best and I enjoyed listening to the timbre of his voice. This alone kept me going! The experience has not put me off Attica Locke, but I think I’ll read her novels in future.