Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Romance
  3. Historic romance

Read and listen for free for 14 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
4.4(9)

The Falls

A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. A newlywed, he has left behind his wife, Ariah Erskine, in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. ""The Widow Bride of The Falls,"" as Ariah comes to be known, begins a relentless, seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side throughout, confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby is unexpectedly transfixed by the strange, otherworldly gaze of this plain, strange woman, falling in love with her though they barely exchange a word. What follows is their passionate love affair, marriage, and children -- a seemingly perfect existence.

But the tragedy by which their life together began shadows them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder. What unfurls is a drama of parents and their children; of secrets and sins; of lawsuits, murder and eventually redemption.

Set against the mythic historic backdrop of Niagara Falls, Joyce Carol Oates explores the American family in crisis, but also America itself in the mid-twentieth century. The Falls is a love story gone wrong and righted and it alone places Joyce Carol Oates definitively in the company of the great American novelists.

Performed by Anna Fields


Author:

  • Joyce Carol Oates

Narrator:

  • Anna Fields

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 17 h 35 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Romance
  • Historic romance

More by Joyce Carol Oates

Skip the list
  1. Butcher

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook
  2. Mitt liv som rotte

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook
  3. Dangerous Women

    Lorenzo Carcaterra, Ian Rankin, Anne Perry, Otto Penzler, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Mosley, Jay Mcinerney, Ed McBain, Laura Lippman, Elmore Leonard, Andrew Klavan, J. A. Jance, Nelson Demille, Jeffery Deaver, Thomas H. Cook, John Connolly, Michael Connelly, S. J. Rozan

    audiobook
  4. A Darker Shade of Noir : New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook
  5. Zero-Sum

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook
  6. Zero-Sum

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook
  7. When Things Get Dark

    Josh Malerman, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Tremblay, Carmen Maria Machado

    book
  8. Echoes : The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories

    Ellen Datlow, Dale Bailey, Nathan Ballingrud, Aliette de Bodard, Richard Bowes, Pat Cadigan, Siobhan Carroll, F. Marion Crawford, Indrapramit Das, Terry Dowling, Brian Evenson, Gemma Files, Ford Madox Ford, Jeffrey Ford, Alice Hoffman, Carole Johnstone, Stephen Graham Jones, Richard Kadrey, John Langan, Alison Littlewood, Bracken Macleod, Nick Mamatas, Vincent J. Masterson, Seanan McGuire, Garth Nix, Joyce Carol Oates, M. Rickert, M. L. Siemienowicz, Lee Thomas, Paul Tremblay, A. C. Wise

    book
  9. It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art

    Richard Russo, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Lee Child, Mary Higgins Clark

    book
  10. My Life as a Rat : A Novel

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook
  11. My Life as a Rat

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook
  12. With Shuddering Fall : A Novel

    Joyce Carol Oates

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. Inventing the Abbotts : And Other Stories

    Sue Miller

    audiobook
  2. Burning Girls and Other Stories

    Veronica Schanoes

    audiobook
  3. For Love : A Novel

    Sue Miller

    audiobook
  4. Everything and Nothing

    Araminta Hall

    audiobook
  5. Cities of the Plain

    Cormac McCarthy

    audiobook
  6. Pupcakes : A Christmas Novel

    Annie England Noblin

    audiobook
  7. Monogamy : A Novel

    Sue Miller

    audiobook
  8. Fiskerne

    Hans Kirk

    audiobookbook
  9. Havstorn

    Johan Olofsson

    audiobook
  10. The Counsellor

    Cormac McCarthy

    audiobook
  11. Notre-Dame de Paris

    Victor Hugo

    audiobook
  12. His Last Bow

    Arthur Conan Doyle

    book

  • 85 books

    Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including and . She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5