Elsa Hart has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.8★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne.
The White Mirror
Summary
In The White Mirror, the follow-up to Elsa Hart's critically acclaimed debut, Jade Dragon Mountain, Li Du, an imperial librarian and former exile in 18th-century China, is now an independent traveler. He is journeying with a trade caravan bound for Lhasa when a detour brings them to a valley hidden between mountain passes. On the icy planks of a wooden bridge, a monk sits in contemplation. Closer inspection reveals that the monk is dead, apparently of a self-inflicted wound. His robes are rent, revealing a strange symbol painted on his chest. When the rain turns to snow, the caravan is forced to seek hospitality from the local lord while they wait for the storm to pass. The dead monk, Li Du soon learns, was a reclusive painter. According to the family, his bizarre suicide is not surprising, given his obsession with the demon world. But Li Du is convinced that all is not as it seems. Why did the caravan leader detour to this particular valley? Why does the lord's heir sleep in the barn like a servant? And who is the mysterious woman traveling through the mountain wilds? Trapped in the snow, surrounded by secrets and an unexplained grief that haunts the manor, Li Du cannot distract himself from memories he's tried to leave behind. As he discovers irrefutable evidence of the painter's murder and pieces together the dark circumstances of his death, Li Du must face the reason he will not go home and, ultimately, the reason why he must.
©2016 Elsa Hart (P)2017 Macmillan Audio
City of Ink: A Mystery
Summary
Following the enthralling 18th-century Chinese mysteries Jade Dragon Mountain and White Mirror, comes Elsa Hart's next Li Du adventure in City of Ink. Li Du was prepared to travel anywhere in the world except for one place: home. But to unravel the mystery that surrounds his mentor’s execution, that’s exactly where he must go. Plunged into the painful memories and teeming streets of Beijing, Li Du obtains a humble clerkship that offers anonymity and access to the records he needs. He is beginning to make progress when his search for answers buried in the past is interrupted by murder in the present. The wife of a local factory owner is found dead, along with a man who appears to have been her lover, and the most likely suspect is the husband. But what Li Du’s superiors at the North Borough Office are willing to accept as a crime of passion strikes Li Du as something more calculated. As past and present intertwine, Li Du’s investigations reveal that many of Beijing’s residents - foreign and Chinese, artisan and official, scholar and soldier - have secrets they would kill to protect. When the threats begin, Li Du must decide how much he is willing to sacrifice to discover the truth in a city bent on concealing it, a city where the stroke of a brush on paper can alter the past, change the future, prolong a life, or end one.
©2018 Elsa Hart (P)2018 Macmillan Audio
Jade Dragon Mountain
Summary
On the mountainous border of China and Tibet in 1708, a detective must learn what a killer already knows: that empires rise and fall on the strength of the stories they tell. Li Du was an imperial librarian. Now he is an exile. Arriving in Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border, he is surprised to find it teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants. All have come for a spectacle unprecedented in this remote province: an eclipse of the sun commanded by the emperor himself. When a Jesuit astronomer is found murdered in the home of the local magistrate, blame is hastily placed on Tibetan bandits. But Li Du suspects this was no random killing. Everyone has secrets: the ambitious magistrate, the powerful consort, the bitter servant, the irreproachable secretary, the East India Company merchant, the nervous missionary, and the traveling storyteller who can't keep his own story straight. Beyond the sloping roofs and festival banners, Li Du can see the mountain pass that will take him out of China forever. He must choose whether to leave and embrace his exile or to stay and investigate a murder that the town of Dayan seems all too willing to forget.
©2015 Elsa Hart (P)2015 Macmillan Audio
The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne
Summary
From the author of the acclaimed Li Du novels comes Elsa Hart's new atmospheric mystery series. London, 1703. In a time when the old approaches to science coexist with the new, one elite community attempts to understand the world by collecting its wonders. Sir Barnaby Mayne, the most formidable of these collectors, has devoted his life to filling his cabinets. While the curious-minded vie for invitations to study the rare stones, bones, books, and artifacts he has amassed, some visitors come with a darker purpose. For Cecily Kay, it is a passion for plants that brings her to the Mayne house. The only puzzle she expects to encounter is how to locate the specimens she needs within Sir Barnaby’s crowded cabinets. But when her host is stabbed to death, Cecily finds the confession of the supposed killer unconvincing. She pays attention to details - years of practice have taught her that the smallest particulars can distinguish a harmless herb from a deadly one - and in the case of Sir Barnaby’s murder, there are too many inconsistencies for her to ignore. To discover the truth, Cecily must enter the world of the collectors, a realm where intellect is distorted by obsession and greed. As her pursuit of answers brings her closer to a killer, she risks being given a final resting place amid the bones that wait, silent and still, in the cabinets of Barnaby Mayne. A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books. "Spectacular. An extraordinary time machine of a novel, transporting us three centuries into the past, when Stuart London roiled with color and clamored with the grinding of carriage wheels.... And Cecily May, the supremely winning botanist-sleuth braving hidden dangers in The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, is a hero for the ages - her and ours." (A. J. Finn, number one NYT best-selling author) “Hart establishes herself as a versatile talent with this exceptional standalone set in 1703 London.... She is bound to become a household name for readers who love clever and fair whodunits.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
©2020 Elsa Hart (P)2020 Macmillan Audio