Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Ariel
    Ariel
    Ariel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Ariel

    Written by Lawrence Block

    Narrated by Alexandra O'Karma

    2.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Best-selling author of more than 50 books, Lawrence Block is a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and winner of many Shamus Awards. He is widely praised for his popular Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery series. In Ariel, he has created a dark tale laced with terror. Twelve-year-old Ariel is a strange, solitary girl. Recently, Ariel and her mother have seen a ghostly figure in their house. As a result, they are both having dreams that are becoming stranger, yet more and more real. What is the link between this frightening manifestation and the house? Lawrence Block carefully blurs the boundaries between fear and obsession as he steadily increases the suspense. As Ariel's family moves toward tragedy, so does the reader's certainty that a terrible force is at work.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 29, 2011
    ISBN9781461809456
    Ariel
    Author

    Lawrence Block

    LAWRENCE BLOCK has been writing crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century. He has published more than 100 books, and no end of short stories. LB is best known for his series characters, including Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, and Keller. LB has also published under pseudonyms including Jill Emerson, John Warren Wells, Lesley Evans, and Anne Campbell Clarke. His monthly instructional column ran in WRITER'S DIGEST for 14 years and led to a series of books for writers. He has also written television and film screenplays. Several of LB's books have been filmed, including A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES. LB is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards, Japanese Maltese Falcon award, Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association, been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has been awarded the Société 813 trophy.

    More audiobooks from Lawrence Block

    Related to Ariel

    Related audiobooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Four Best Audiobooks Of June To Take You Places

      Jun 23, 2020

      Hardboiled mysteries, obscure farming communities, and tales of home and family provide ample entertainment in June’s audiobook roundup.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Pallbearers Club

      Jun 15, 2022

      The Pallbearers Club
      1 min read

    • Article

      The 22 Murders Of Madison May

      Jul 14, 2021

      ⏵ RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ⏵ Author Max Barry ⏵ Publisher Hodder & Stoughton ➔ Why did Quantum Leap’s Dr Sam Beckett never find his way home? This multiverse-hopping sci-fi novel offers an answer: because travellers can

      1 min read

    • Article

      Auto Eroticism

      Nov 13, 2020

      Auto Eroticism
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Blue-collar Bard

      Jul 13, 2020

      The Blue-collar Bard
      13 min read

    • Article

      Pulling Up Azaleas

      Jan 10, 2023

      Throughout their lives, women are showered with bouquets of roses on numerous splendid occasions. But men? They’re only given flowers at their funeral. It’s a harsh world for men, as our lives tend to go unappreciated until death. Such was the case a

      22 min read

    • Article

      The Trans Retelling Of Jack Sheppard

      Jul 9, 2018

      In Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg’s buzzy first novel, historian Dr. Voth discovers a suspicious manuscript that upends centuries-old assumptions about notorious jail breaker Jack Sheppard. The document reveals that 18th century street prowl

      1 min read

    • Article

      They Almost Got Away With Murder Killer Sisters

      Aug 12, 2021

      In a quiet suburban neighbourhood of well-kept identical townhouses in Palm Harbor, Florida, 85-year-old Anthony Tomaselli had his predictable routine. Every evening after watching Wheel of Fortune, he went to the nearby beach to catch the sunset. Re

      3 min read

    • Article

      Sylvain Neuvel

      Mar 24, 2021

      THERE ARE HOLES IN HUMAN HISTORY into which, if you’re careful, you can drop stories without causing discernible ripples in the timeline. It’s an approach taken by Sylvain Neuvel in his new novel, A History Of What Comes Next. It deals with the devel

      3 min read

    • Article

      Joshua Ferris Writes a Work of Hope

      Aug 2, 2021

      This was always going to be about Joshua Ferris’s dad. “You catch me pretty fresh,” the author deadpans over Zoom. “I haven’t talked about it.” The “it” refers to his long-awaited new novel, A Calling for Charlie Barnes, which publishes in September.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Plunge Into Summer With The 10 Best Books Of July

      Jul 7, 2020

      Whether you’re hitting the road or staying put, a bumper crop of summer reads offers a welcome distraction. Dig right in.

      2 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      May 14, 2020

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • Article

      Open Short Story Winner Tight Situation

      Apr 4, 2024

      When Carol first wakes up, she thinks it must have been a dream. The ringing phone had been distant, muffled as if the landline device had been buried in a bag of something soft like cotton wool - the packing material stuffed so tightly into its bag

      6 min read

    • Article

      O Fortuna, Velut Luna

      Sep 15, 2018

      What is Miss Treece’s trouble, according to a popular notion? The man A has failed to show up. Arousing herself at the restaurant, she fixes her lipstick when her solo supper concludes and takes herself down the stairs situated behind the bar. There,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Metamorphosis

      Oct 28, 2019

      Metamorphosis
      5 min read

    • Article

      The DREAM

      Mar 18, 2020

      The DREAM
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Joke

      Sep 1, 2020

      Although best known for his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury was also a prolific writer of short stories, having published his first while still a teenager. This previously unpublished story likely dates to 1950, the year The Martian Chronicle

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Stonemason’s Wife

      Sep 1, 2020

      JOLINA HAS been hearing voices of men she’s never met. Voices like water, clear and cold, eddying at the back of her mind. They’re not real. She knows this. As in, she’s not crazy. They’re only the voices she’s heard on the phone, voices of men who b

      6 min read

    • Article

      Abandoned

      May 24, 2022

      Abandoned
      5 min read

    • Article

      Beyond The Door

      Jun 30, 2020

      Beyond The Door
      10 min read

    • Article

      Sifting

      Mar 4, 2024

      CASSANDRA GARBUS is the author of the novel Solo Variations. Her fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, American Short Fiction, Texas Review, Meridian, Louisiana Literature, and The Cortland Review. Lily slumps on the living room couch, absorb

      22 min read

    • Article

      THE WALLS Have Eyes

      Aug 6, 2019

      THE WALLS Have Eyes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cast Out

      Jul 10, 2021

      Verity pushed back the quilts, rolled off her straw mattress onto the floor, felt for the poker, and stirred the ashes. The embers glowed. She wouldn’t have to go fire-borrowing again. Her chilled hands were clumsy. One glowing bit of wood rolled fro

      21 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Ariel

    2.5/5

    23 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This was less a ghost story and more a story about a dysfunctional family on the verge of implosion. Ariel is adopted and even before Roberta has her one and only natural child, she has begun to hate her daughter. Ariel is not like “normal” children and so Roberta thinks she’s defective and wishes there was a way to return her like a pair of shoes that pinches. Then when the baby dies of crib death, she snaps and actually blames Ariel for it.The father and husband is a borderline alcoholic who is completely uninvolved in the lives of his wife and daughter. He routinely shuts himself up in his manly study for an evening of brandy, books and pipe smoking. How cliché. But he does love Ariel in his very distant way. Roberta on the other hand I don’t think he likes much. Distance doesn’t exactly foster intimacy or love. They sleep in separate beds.Which brings us to Roberta and her newly dead child. It is not David’s and they both know it, but do not speak of it. The true father doesn’t acknowledge it either, but he does show up for the funeral. After that, he and Bobby start their affair again. This time however, it is a hollow reward. Neither are satisfied by it knowing it’s a hopeless exercise – neither will leave their spouses -, but they are compelled to sneak off to various anonymous hotel rooms.So Roberta thinks the house is haunted because she keeps seeing this ghostly woman and because the pilot lights on the stove go out (Ariel blows them out to torment Roberta) and because Ariel’s steps don’t make the stairs creak, but hers and David’s do. What an idiot. Then Ariel finds an old portrait of a woman in the attic and feels that it is a picture of the ghost. She hangs the painting in her room and sometimes lights a candle and sort of falls into a trance before it. This behavior and a few coincidences with some injured classmates makes her think she may have unconsciously been responsible for her brother’s death. Equal idiocy, but if people behaved rationally in stories they would be very boring.Roberta has been telling these tales to Jeff, her lover and he does a little investigating. His guess is that the portrait is of a woman who used to live in Roberta’s house in the mid 1800s. All of her children die mysteriously within a 3-week period. She was ostensibly blamed, but never charged with any crime since it was obviously due to the fact that she was overwhelmed with grief because her sailor husband was lost at sea. Eventually she commits suicide by sticking her head in the very oven Roberta so despises. For some reason, this knowledge makes Jeff go crazy because Ariel resembles this woman closely. He starts stalking her, following her from home to school and to her friend’s house. Eventually he coaxes her into the car and pulls a gun on her. Instead of panicking she comes on to him in a completely uncharacteristic way – she gropes his crotch and kisses him and has sex with him. She’s 12 and a young 12 at that. Give me a break. I was 12 in 1980 and there is NO WAY I would have an idea to do this, much less how to do it if the idea did occur to me. Up until that point it was a very believable novel. Bah. But, Jeff lets her go and she heads to her friend’s house who sees a change in her – she seems older. After that she heads home and Roberta is popping valium, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Pretty soon the news comes on to reveal that Jeff went off the deep end, shot his whole family to death and then himself. This puts Roberta over the edge, too and she kills herself with valium and the gas stove she loves so much.
    • 1/5
      This book is unreadable and I put it down after a short time. Shame, because I'm a big fan of Block and was trying to read everything I could find by him.
    • 2/5
      As a Lawrence Block fan, I find this book odd -- oddly unreadable, that is.