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Cruel Miracles: Tales of Death, Hope, and Holiness Audiobook
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(3.02) - 246 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
This fourth volume in Orson Scott Card's five-book anthology of short stories features tales with religious themes, exploring the mysteries of ritual, sacrifice, faith, and death.
Mortal Gods
In our mortality lies our greatness.
Saving Grace
A story of TV faith healers and those who follow them.
Eye for Eye
An abused child has the gift of creating illness and death in those he is angry with. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1988.
St. Amy's Tale
A family destroys all technology.
Kingsmeat
When flesh-eating aliens take over a human colony world, one human forestalls total doom by feeding them non-essential bits of his fellow colonists.
Holy
A seemingly pointless mission to bring an offering to another culture's shrine takes on unexpected meaning.
"I believe that speculative fiction—science fiction in particular—is the last American refuge of religious literature. Real religious literature, I think, explores the nature of the universe and discovers the purpose behind it."—Orson Scott Card, from his introduction
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"If you like sci-fi and short fiction, this is a great collection. Some of my favorite short stories are in this collection. Mortal Gods, Eye for an Eye, and Kingsmeat are all classics in my view. A good representation of stories with and without action."
— Richard (4 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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“Definitive…A series of introductions and afterwords offering Card’s thoughts on his life and his writing are as absorbing as the stories.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“The award-winning author of Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, and the Alvin Maker series demonstrates his talent for shorter fiction in this collection of 46 stories that range from fantasy and SF to horror and theological speculation…Detailed introductions and afterwords reveal insights into the thought processes of one of the genre’s most convincing storytellers. An important volume; for most libraries.”
— Library Journal, on the whole anthology
Cruel Miracles Listener Reviews
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" All of OSC's other books that I've read were so amazing that I thought this one would be too - Sorry to say it was a little disappointing. "
— Lisi, 6/21/2012 -
" Some stories that make you think... And I appreciate that he put an explanation of where the ideas came from for each at the end. I do enjoy a good collection of short stories. Looking forward to finding and reading the other three! "
— Tanya, 7/1/2011 -
" There are no throw-away tales in this. I originally read "Eye for Eye" in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and grabbed this book just to read that story again. The others, though, are just as good. "
— Dimitry, 6/22/2011 -
" Eye for an Eye started strong but fizzles off half way on. Lost boys can be quite haunting and stay with u long after reading. "
— Ken, 2/28/2011 -
" Religious ones on this one. Interesting. "
— Scott, 8/3/2010
About Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card, the author of the New York Times bestseller Ender’s Game, has won several Hugo and Nebula awards for his works of speculative fiction. His Ender novels are widely read by adults and younger readers and are increasingly used in schools. Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy, American-frontier fantasy, biblical novels, poetry, plays, and scripts.
About the Narrators
Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.
John Rubinstein is an actor, composer, and director who won a Tony Award for his starring role in Broadway’s Children of a Lesser God. He has narrated dozens of audiobooks, earning several AudioFile Earphones Awards and being named a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2013.
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.