
Gutter Child
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Phoenix Pagliacci
-
By:
-
Jael Richardson
About this listen
A fierce and heartbreaking debut from FOLD founder Jael Richardson about a young woman with the courage to determine her own future
Imagine a world in which the hopeless and vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society. Imagine a world divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. In that world lives Elimina Dubois, one of only 100 children selected as a social experiment by the Mainland government to be taken from their mothers in the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity.
But when her Mainland mother dies when Elimina is just a teenager, Elimina finds herself all alone, forced into an unfamiliar life of servitude, unsure of who she is and where she belongs. When she makes friends with Gutter children, each making their own way through the crushing cycle of the Gutter System in whatever ways they know how, Elimina will discover that the thing she needs more than anything may not be the freedom she imagined after all.
Gutter Child takes us on the journey of a young woman in a fractured world of heartbreaking disadvantages and horrific injustices. Richardson’s Elimina is a modern heroine in an altered but all too recognizable reality, who, must find the strength within herself to determine her own future and defy a system that tries to shape her destiny.
Jael Richardson is the Artistic Director of The FOLD literary festival, the books columnist on CBC Radio’s ‘q’ and an outspoken advocate on issues of diversity. She is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. The book received a CBC Bookie Award and earned Richardson an Acclaim Award and a My People Award as an Emerging Artist. A children’s book called The Stone Thrower was published by Groundwood Books in 2016. Her essay “Conception” is part of Room’s first Women of Colour edition, and excerpts from her first play, my upside down black face, are published in the anthology T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers. Richardson has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and she lives in Brampton, Ontario.
©2021 Jael Richardson (P)2020 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
- A Novel
- By: Angie Cruz
- Narrated by: Kimberly M. Wetherell, Rossmery Almonte
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life.
-
-
Fascinating
- By Tails32x on 09-20-22
By: Angie Cruz
-
The Magnolia Palace
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, 21-year-old Lillian Carter's life has completely fallen apart. For the past six years, under the moniker Angelica, Lillian was one of the most sought-after artists' models in New York City, with statues based on her figure gracing landmarks from the Plaza Hotel to the Brooklyn Bridge
-
-
This isn't my favorite but entertaining
- By Linda on 02-01-22
By: Fiona Davis
-
The Devil in Silver
- By: Victor LaValle
- Narrated by: Victor LaValle
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pepper is a rambunctious big man, and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He's not mentally ill, but that doesn't seem to matter. On his first night, he's visited by a terrifying creature who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It's no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl.
-
-
Not a horror/thriller
- By Matilda Luk on 03-17-18
By: Victor LaValle
-
Paper Names
- A Novel
- By: Susie Luo
- Narrated by: Austin Ku
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There’s Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, grapples with the expectations of a first generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there’s Oliver, a handsome white lawyer with a dark family secret and who lives in the building where Tony works.
-
-
Nice story
- By asdfasf on 05-02-24
By: Susie Luo
-
White Ivy
- A Novel
- By: Susie Yang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raised outside of Boston, Ivy’s immigrant grandmother relies on Ivy’s mild appearance for cover as she teaches her granddaughter how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen - and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, and her dream instantly evaporates.
-
-
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
- By KayMac on 11-06-20
By: Susie Yang
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
- A Novel
- By: Angie Cruz
- Narrated by: Kimberly M. Wetherell, Rossmery Almonte
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life.
-
-
Fascinating
- By Tails32x on 09-20-22
By: Angie Cruz
-
The Magnolia Palace
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, 21-year-old Lillian Carter's life has completely fallen apart. For the past six years, under the moniker Angelica, Lillian was one of the most sought-after artists' models in New York City, with statues based on her figure gracing landmarks from the Plaza Hotel to the Brooklyn Bridge
-
-
This isn't my favorite but entertaining
- By Linda on 02-01-22
By: Fiona Davis
-
The Devil in Silver
- By: Victor LaValle
- Narrated by: Victor LaValle
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pepper is a rambunctious big man, and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He's not mentally ill, but that doesn't seem to matter. On his first night, he's visited by a terrifying creature who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It's no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl.
-
-
Not a horror/thriller
- By Matilda Luk on 03-17-18
By: Victor LaValle
-
Paper Names
- A Novel
- By: Susie Luo
- Narrated by: Austin Ku
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There’s Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, grapples with the expectations of a first generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there’s Oliver, a handsome white lawyer with a dark family secret and who lives in the building where Tony works.
-
-
Nice story
- By asdfasf on 05-02-24
By: Susie Luo
-
White Ivy
- A Novel
- By: Susie Yang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raised outside of Boston, Ivy’s immigrant grandmother relies on Ivy’s mild appearance for cover as she teaches her granddaughter how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen - and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, and her dream instantly evaporates.
-
-
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
- By KayMac on 11-06-20
By: Susie Yang
-
No Gods, No Monsters
- A Novel (The Convergence Saga, Book 1)
- By: Cadwell Turnbull
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it. As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence.
-
-
amazing!
- By Gemma stone on 09-10-21
By: Cadwell Turnbull
-
The Binding
- A Novel
- By: Bridget Collins
- Narrated by: Carl Prekopp
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a bookbinder - a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born.
-
-
Just wow
- By RUKiddingMee on 05-18-19
By: Bridget Collins
-
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead
- A Novel
- By: Emily Austin
- Narrated by: Emily Tremaine
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gilda, a 20-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace.
-
-
Gilda & Eleanor Would be Friends
- By K Nieto on 07-14-21
By: Emily Austin
-
The Nature of Fragile Things
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins, Jason Culp
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.
-
-
The Nature of Fragile Things is a 5 star listen!
- By Kathy… send to help my husband to sleep!! on 02-04-21
By: Susan Meissner
-
Necessary Lies
- By: Diane Chamberlain
- Narrated by: Alison Elliott
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best-selling author Diane Chamberlain delivers a breakout book about a small southern town 50 years ago, and the darkest - and most hopeful - places in the human heart. After losing her parents, 15-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister, and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm. As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness, and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give. When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County’s newest social worker, she doesn’t realize just how much her help is needed.
-
-
Sometimes the truth is hard to hear. Listen anyway
- By Nana on 01-26-15
-
VenCo
- A Novel
- By: Cherie Dimaline
- Narrated by: Michelle St. John
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Métis millennial Lucky St. James is barely hanging on when she learns she’ll be evicted from the tiny Toronto apartment she shares with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella. But then one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. She burrows through a wall to find a tarnished silver spoon, humming with otherworldly energy, etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM.
-
-
Can I please live in this book?
- By Melanie on 02-23-23
By: Cherie Dimaline
-
The Library of the Unwritten
- A Novel from Hell's Library, Book 1
- By: A. J. Hackwith
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing - a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto.
-
-
Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover
- By Terry on 01-21-20
By: A. J. Hackwith
-
Echo
- By: Pam Muñoz Ryan
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Mark Bramhall, David deVries, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Audie Award, Middle Grade, 2016. Lost and alone in the forbidden Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica. Decades later Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each become sinterwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives, binding them by an invisible thread of destiny. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a father, protecting a brother, holding a family together.
-
-
One of the best audio productions I have heard
- By tru britty on 07-28-15
By: Pam Muñoz Ryan
-
The Chaperone
- By: Laura Moriarty
- Narrated by: Elizabeth McGovern
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
> The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a 15-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip.
-
-
Perfection.
- By Amanda on 06-07-12
By: Laura Moriarty
-
My Sweet Girl
- By: Amanda Jayatissa
- Narrated by: Deepa Samuel
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since she was adopted from a Sri Lankan orphanage, Paloma has had the best of everything - schools, money, and parents so perfect that she fears she'll never live up to them. Now at 30 years old and recently cut off from her parents’ funds, she decides to sublet the second bedroom of her overpriced San Francisco apartment to Arun, who recently moved from India. Paloma has to admit, it feels good helping someone find their way in America - that is, until Arun discovers Paloma's darkest secret, one that could jeopardize her own fragile place in this country.
-
-
slow burn suspense
- By Barbara S on 11-14-21
By: Amanda Jayatissa
-
The Forgotten Home Child
- By: Genevieve Graham
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins, James Langton
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 97 years old, Winnifred Ellis knows she doesn’t have much time left, and it is almost a relief to realize that once she is gone, the truth about her shameful past will die with her. But when her great-grandson Jamie, the spitting image of her dear late husband, asks about his family tree, Winnifred can’t lie any longer, even if it means breaking a promise she made so long ago....
-
-
Great Story
- By Kindle Customer on 04-13-20
By: Genevieve Graham
-
The Wolf and the Woodsman
- A Novel
- By: Ava Reid
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the vein of Naomi Novik’s New York Times best seller Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden’s national best seller The Bear and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut - inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology - follows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart a tyrant.
-
-
Hard to get through it
- By shopper on 12-20-21
By: Ava Reid