Ann Leary has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 17 ratings. The most-rated is The Good House.
The Good House
Summary
Audie Award Finalist, Fiction, 2014 A riveting novel in which an engaging and wildly irreverent woman is in complete denial - about herself, her drinking, and her love for a man she's known all her life. The Good House tells the story of Hildy Good, who lives in a small town on Boston's North Shore. Hildy is a successful real-estate broker, good neighbor, mother, and grandmother. She's also a raging alcoholic. Hildy's family held an intervention for her about a year before this story takes place - "if they invite you over for dinner, and it's not a major holiday," she advises "run for your life" - and now she feels lonely and unjustly persecuted. She has also fooled herself into thinking that moderation is the key to her drinking problem. As if battling her demons wasn’t enough to keep her busy, Hildy soon finds herself embroiled in the underbelly of her New England town, a craggy little place that harbors secrets. There's a scandal, some mysticism, babies, old houses, drinking, and desire - and a love story between two craggy 60-somethings that's as real and sexy as you get. An exceptional novel that is at turns hilarious and sobering, The Good House asks the question: What will it take to keep Hildy Good from drinking? For good.
©2012 Ann Leary (P)2013 Macmillan Audio
Outtakes from a Marriage
Summary
Julia and Joe Ferraro are living the good life in Manhattan now that Joe's finally made it; he's the star of a hit TV show and has just been nominated for a Golden Globe award. After many lean years, they've got a grand Upper West Side apartment and an Amagansett beach house, and their two kids go to elite private schools. Even better, Julia and Joe are still madly in love. Or so Julia thinks, until the fateful evening when she accidentally hears a voice mail on Joe's phone - a message left by a sultry-sounding woman who clearly isn't just a friend. Suddenly, Julia is in a tailspin, compulsively checking Joe's messages, stalking him in cyberspace, and showing up unannounced on his sets, wondering all along if she should confront him. Julia's search forces her to consider the possibility that in the long process of helping Joe become something, she has become a bit of a "nothing", as her daughter once described her to her class on career day. A big husband-stalking nothing. When Julia and Joe first met, she was an edgy East Village girl who wrote music reviews for the Village Voice and threw famed parties in a gritty downtown loft with her friends. Joe was a shy, awkward drama student who followed her around like a lovesick spaniel. After he won her heart, Julia helped Joe evolve into a roguishly handsome charmer who became increasingly obsessed with his looks and his career. Julia, meanwhile, settled into doting motherhood and a new life of comfy clothes and parenting associations. Now, faced with the looming awards show and the possibility of a destroyed marriage, Julia embarks on an accelerated self-improvement routine. A unique take on the perennially popular issue of women trying not to lose themselves in matrimony and motherhood, Outtakes from a Marriage is expertly and humorously set against the Manhattan preschool mafia, the Hollywood machine, and the ticking clock of a waiting red carpet.
©2008 Ann Leary (P)2008 Random House Audio
The Good House
Summary
Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman’s life - middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn’t one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit, and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage ‘an intervention’ and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn’t she enjoy a drink now and then? But we start to see another side to Hildy Good.
©2014 Ann Leary (P)2014 Oakhill Publishing
The Children
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author Ann Leary comes the captivating story of a wealthy but unconventional New England family, told from the perspective of a reclusive 29-year-old who has a secret (and famous) life on the Internet. Charlotte Maynard rarely leaves her mother's home, the sprawling Connecticut lake house that belonged to her late stepfather, Whit Whitman, and the generations of Whitmans before him. While Charlotte and her sister, Sally, grew up at Lakeside, their stepbrothers, Spin and Perry, were welcomed as weekend guests. Now the grown boys own the estate, which Joan occupies by their grace - and a provision in the family trust. When Spin, the youngest and favorite of all the children, brings his fiancée home for the summer, the entire family is intrigued. The beautiful and accomplished Laurel Atwood breathes new life into this often comically rarefied world. But as the wedding draws near and flaws surface in the family's polite veneer, an array of simmering resentments and unfortunate truths is exposed. With remarkable wit and insight, Ann Leary pulls back the curtain on one blended family as they are forced to grapple with the assets and liabilities - both material and psychological - left behind by their wonderfully flawed patriarch.
©2016 Ann Leary (P)2016 Macmillan Audio