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.

    Unavailable
    Queen of the Underworld: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Queen of the Underworld: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Queen of the Underworld: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Queen of the Underworld: A Novel

    Written by Gail Godwin

    Narrated by Carrington MacDuffie

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Here at last is the eagerly awaited new novel from New York Times bestselling author Gail Godwin. Queen of the Underworld is sweeping and sultry literary fiction, featuring a memorable young heroine and engaging characters whose intimate dramas interconnect with hers.
    In the summer of 1959, as Castro clamps down on Cuba and its first wave of exiles flees to the States to wait out what they hope to be his short-lived reign, Emma Gant, fresh out of college, begins her career as a reporter. Her fierce ambition and belief in herself are set against the stories swirling around her, both at the newspaper office and in her downtown Miami hotel, which is filling up with refugees.
    Emma's avid curiosity about life thrives amid the tropical charms and intrigues of Miami. While toiling at the news desk, she plans the fictional stories she will write in her spare time. She spends her nights getting to know the Cuban families in her hotel-and rendezvousing with her married lover, Paul Nightingale, owner of a private Miami Beach club.
    As Emma experiences the historical events enveloping the city, she trains her perceptive eye on the people surrounding her: a newfound Cuban friend who joins the covert anti-Castro training brigade, a gambling racketeer who poses a grave threat to Paul, and a former madam, still in her twenties, who becomes both Emma's obsession and her alter ego. Emma's life, like a complicated dance that keeps sweeping her off her balance, is suddenly filled with divided loyalties, shady dealings, romantic and professional setbacks, and, throughout, her adamant determination to avoid "usurpation" by others and remain the protagonist of her own quest.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 10, 2006
    ISBN9781415931677
    Unavailable
    Queen of the Underworld: A Novel
    Author

    Gail Godwin

    Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including Violet Clay, Father Melancholy's Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband and Evenings at Five. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer, her journal in two volumes (ed. Rob Neufeld). She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Gail Godwin lives in Woodstock, New York. Visit her website at www.gailgodwin.com

    More audiobooks from Gail Godwin

    Related to Queen of the Underworld

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What To Read

      Nov 5, 2021

      Author Margot Hart is employed as a writer in residence at Castle Deverill, which has been turned into a luxury hotel, and sets out to write a biography about the famous Irish family who used to own it. But as she slowly forms a bond with the reclusi

      2 min read

    • Article

      Enchanting chapters WEEKLY TOP 10

      Nov 20, 2022

      With best-selling author Nicky Pellegrino One of New Zealand’s best-loved novels, this is the story of five-year-old Rose, who arrives with her mother in the bleak coal-mining settlement of Denniston on the West Coast in the late 1800s. It is a rough

      3 min read

    • Article

      Making A Killing

      Aug 8, 2021

      Making A Killing
      2 min read

    • Article

      Cressida Connolly

      Nov 17, 2021

      The Fell Picador £12.99 If I were a teacher of creative writing, I would ask all my students to read the chapter called Zanzibar from Sarah Moss’s previous novel, Summerwater. Its first sentence is ‘They are trying to have simultaneous orgasms.’ From

      2 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      May 19, 2021

      Great Read
      5 min read

    • Article

      Man Of A Thousand Faces

      Jul 14, 2022

      Man Of A Thousand Faces
      6 min read

    • Article

      MICHAEL BARBER On The Legacy Of The Angry Young Men

      Apr 5, 2023

      Over the past few years diversity in publishing has become a hotly debated topic, the complaint being that the industry is still ‘hideously’ white, middle-class and predominately heterosexual. In the early Fifties people didn't talk about diversity a

      3 min read

    • Article

      Just The Ticket!

      Oct 3, 2021

      Just The Ticket!
      1 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Clarke, Akhtar, Nemerever, and More

      Sep 15, 2020

      Our own Thomas Beckwith takes a look at the notable books publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Clarke, Akhtar, Nemerever, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Month

      Nov 25, 2022

      By Sara Gran American genre-bender Gran’s latest book is a biblio-mystery that poses the question of how far we will go to save someone we love; more insidiously, it examines how life has a habit of giving us both more and less than we desire. Having

      2 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Alam, Klay, French, Kafka, and More

      Oct 6, 2020

      In a year that's been disorienting, bizarre, and nightmarish, it seems only fitting that a new book by Franz Kafka publishes today. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Alam, Klay, French, Kafka, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Emma Cline, author, on David Plante's Difficult Women

      Mar 23, 2023

      “Thick slabs of biography are less appealing to me these days - what I've been looking for lately is particularity, a book where someone cuts off a thin slice of a life and applies their own sensibility to it. Difficult Women by David Plante makes yo

      1 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      May 19, 2021

      Great Read
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Whitehead, Jones, Williams, and More

      Sep 14, 2021

      This week, we're eyeing new titles from the likes of Colson Whitehead, Gayl Jones, and Joy Williams. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Whitehead, Jones, Williams, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading

      Jan 5, 2022

      Summer Reading
      2 min read

    • Article

      Story Time

      Nov 4, 2020

      Emily Main is a London-based journalist writing a story for The New Yorker who, as the book opens, is flying in to Sydney. She’s there to write a story about the tragic demise of famous Aussie restaurant chain Lucky’s following a mass shooting at one

      1 min read

    Reviews for Queen of the Underworld

    3/5

    37 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      In this novel, set in Miami in the early 60s, just after Castro took power in Cuba, the characters are interesting, the writing good, and the plot minimalist. The protagonist, Emma Gant, is a young journalist, just moved to Miami, flirting with being a femme fatale, and at the same time, trying to be taken seriously by the old dogs at the newspaper. She develops a fascination for a local character, a woman who is now respectable but has a colorful past as a madam in a brothel.

      The historical and regional detail is vivid, but I had a hard time getting under Emma’s skin. This period in Miami is presented as a crossroads in her life, but I never really felt it had changed her much. She seems just as cool and removed at the end of the novel as she did in the beginning.
    • 3/5
      Young Emma Gant, a new graduate from J school, has recently received her first assignment, working as the Miami Star’s newest reporter. This is her chance to break free from a small town existence, a controlling step father and to live her dream. Following an interesting train ride she arrives at her hotel, escorted by her aunt Tess. The surroundings are not what she expected, not even a view of the beach. Disappointed yet pleased with its potential, the Julia Tuttle becomes her sanctuary, her comfort, her shield from the harshness of the real world. Emma is anticipating a phone call; it will be the voice of her married lover, Paul, coming to whisk her away. The owner of a resort where Emma worked last summer, he was her every heartbeat. The reunion will be sweet. Will they have a future or will fate change Emma’s perfect plans? With a mired of multi-faceted characters crossing her path Emma finds her first days on the job to be a roller coaster of events. Writing obits, avoiding the “glass cage” of the women’s section, visiting the papers “morgue”, interviews with tornado survivors and even an encounter with “The Queen of the Underworld” give her many challenges. It is the time of Cuban unrest and Fidel Castro’s usurping of land. The city has an influx of immigrants from varied walks of life, mingled with local color, from aristocratic know-it-alls, to young madams to mafia warnings; each seems a potential threat to her developing “Emma-ness”. Feeling diminished by the experience of other reporters, Emma goes the extra mile to make her mark. Can she carve a niche out for herself? Will she live up to “Lucifer’s” expectations or will she be cast off, banished, to a small town office? The entire book takes place over a period of about 2 weeks and it is filled with Emma’s constant thoughts and imaginings. To truly understand and appreciate the story to the fullest, one should have lived in that era or studied about it. By the way, don’t forget your Spanish-English dictionary.
    • 4/5
      It reminded me of myself at that age, probably because it's so autobiographical.
    • 1/5
      What happened? I love Gail Godwin's books and I tried to get into this one with no success. I had to work to summon the interest to keep going once I'd finished the first few chapters. I kept turning the book over to be certain that Gail Godwin had written it. I am sadly disappointed in this novel that was much anticipated by me.
    • 3/5
      A disappointment from one of my favorite authors. Right through to the last page, it felt like she was setting up a story that never took off. A young woman who, in the first pages, has just graduated from the journalism school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, takes a job at the Miami Star (in part because the 40+-year-old married man with thom she began an affair when she worked for him the previous summer), and a room in a hotel in 1959 occupied mostly by Cuban exiles as they flee Castro's rise to power. I suppose I could chalk this up as another failed novel about the Cuban Revolution, though that story is secondary to the primary one, whatever it is, perhaps the story of a young woman defining herself personally & professionally.