Louise Brealey has narrated 22 audiobooks on Listento.it by 19 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 3,469 ratings. The most-rated is The Silent Patient.
The Silent Patient
Summary
2019 Goodreads Choice Awards 2020 Thriller Awards - Nominee 2019 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year 2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year 2019 Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year "The perfect binge listen." (Yahoo Lifestyle) Instant number one New York Times best seller This program includes a bonus interview with the author. The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband - and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening, her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations - a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....
©2018 Astramare Limited (P)2018 Orion Publishing Group Limited
The Girl on the Train
Summary
The New York Times best seller and USA Today Book of the Year, soon to be a major motion picture starring Emily Blunt. The debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people's lives. Every day the same Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost. Until today And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
©2016 Paula Hawkins (P)2016 Penguin Audio
Cilka's Journey
Summary
"Louise Brealey is an excellent reader who gives Cilka a thoughtful, sympathetic voice." (Jersey's Best) This program includes a bonus conversation with the author. From the author of the multi-million copy bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz comes a new novel based on an incredible true story of love and resilience. Her beauty saved her - and condemned her. Cilka is just 16-years-old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1942, where the commandant immediately notices how beautiful she is. Forcibly separated from the other women prisoners, Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly taken, equals survival. When the war is over and the camp is liberated, freedom is not granted to Cilka: She is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to a Siberian prison camp. But did she really have a choice? And where do the lines of morality lie for Cilka, who was send to Auschwitz when she was still a child? In Siberia, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, including the unwanted attention of the guards. But when she meets a kind female doctor, Cilka is taken under her wing and begins to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under brutal conditions. Confronting death and terror daily, Cilka discovers a strength she never knew she had. And when she begins to tentatively form bonds and relationships in this harsh, new reality, Cilka finds that despite everything that has happened to her, there is room in her heart for love. From child to woman, from woman to healer, Cilka's journey illuminates the resilience of the human spirit - and the will we have to survive.
©2019 Heather Morris (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
The Five
Summary
Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London - the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates; they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time - but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.
©2019 Hallie Rubenhold (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Tidelands
Summary
This New York Times best seller from “one of the great storytellers of our time” (San Francisco Book Review) turns from the glamour of the royal courts to tell the story of an ordinary woman, Alinor, living in a dangerous time for a woman to be different. A country at war. A king beheaded. A woman with a dangerous secret. On Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death. Until she can, she is neither maiden nor wife nor widow, living in a perilous limbo. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life. England is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. Alinor’s suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesn’t follow the rules. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinor’s beauty, but the secrets they don’t know about her and James are far more damning. This is the time of witch-mania, and if the villagers discover the truth, they could take matters into their own hands. “This is Gregory par excellence” (Kirkus Reviews) “Fans of Gregory’s works and of historicals in general will delight in this page-turning tale” (Library Journal, starred review) that is “superb.... A searing portrait of a woman that resonates across the ages” (People).
©2019 Philippa Gregory (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
After the End
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author Clare Mackintosh comes a deeply moving and addictive novel about an impossible choice - and the two paths fate could take. “A beautifully written novel, compelling and clever, tender and true. I can’t stop thinking about it.” (Liane Moriarty, best-selling author of Big Little Lies) “Tailor-made for book clubs and for fans of Jodi Picoult.” (Publishers Weekly) Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. They're best friends, lovers - unshakable. But then their son gets sick and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can't agree. They each want a different future for their son. What if they could have both? A gripping and propulsive exploration of love, marriage, parenthood, and the road not taken, After the End brings one unforgettable family from unimaginable loss to a surprising, satisfying, and redemptive ending and the life they are fated to find. With the emotional power of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, Mackintosh helps us to see that sometimes the end is just another beginning.
©2019 Clare Mackintosh (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Dark Tides
Summary
Named a Best Book of the Month by CNN and MSNBC Named a Most Exciting New Book of Fall by PopSugar Number one New York Times best-selling author Philippa Gregory’s new historical novel tracks the rise of the Tidelands family in London, Venice, and New England. Midsummer Eve, 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy man hoping to find the lover he deserted 21 years before. James Avery has everything to offer, including the favor of the newly restored King Charles II, and he believes that the warehouse's poor owner, Alinor, has the one thing his money cannot buy - his son and heir. The second visitor is a beautiful widow from Venice in deepest mourning. She claims Alinor as her mother-in-law and has come to tell Alinor that her son, Rob, has drowned in the dark tides of the Venice lagoon. Alinor writes to her brother, Ned, newly arrived in faraway New England and trying to make a life between the worlds of the English newcomers and the American Indians as they move toward inevitable war. Alinor tells him that she knows - without doubt - that her son is alive and the widow is an impostor. Set in the poverty and glamour of Restoration London, in the golden streets of Venice, and on the tensely contested frontier of early America, this is a novel of greed and desire: for love, for wealth, for a child, and for home.
©2020 Levon Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
84, Charing Cross Road
Summary
When Helene Hanff makes an innocent inquiry about the possibility of purchasing hard-to-find books through Marks and Co., Booksellers, she begins a 20-year love affair with Frank Doel, the proper English bookseller who answers her letter and sends along her first order in the fall of 1949. They are two very unlikely correspondents: she a cranky Jewish New Yorker who writes TV scripts and lives in a messy apartment on East 95th Street; he a determinedly courteous middle-class Englishman who sends her beautifully bound and often obscure antiquarian books from the shop he manages on Charing Cross Road in London. The letters, written between 1949 and 1969, capture the period and pay tribute to the special kind of reader who treasures a well-worn classic.
©1970 Helen Hanff (P)1993 Recorded Books, LLC
How to Build a Girl
Summary
What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn’t enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes - and build yourself. It’s 1990. Johanna Morrigan, 14, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there’s no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde - fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer! She will save her poverty stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer - like Jo in Little Women, or the Bröntes - but without the dying young bit. By 16, she’s smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. She’s writing pornographic letters to rock-stars, having all the kinds of sex with all the kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less. But what happens when Johanna realizes she’s built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters and a head full of paperbacks, enough to build a girl after all? Imagine The Bell Jar - written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.
©2014 Caitlin Moran (P)2014 HarperCollins Canada
My Dear Bessie: A Love Story in Letters
Summary
Benedict Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey read a love story in letters, played out against the backdrop of the Second World War.
'Can you feel, as you read these words, that I am thinking of you now; aglow, alive, alert at the thought that you are in the same world, and by some strange chance loving me.'
A small blue box opened in 2008 revealed a wartime world of love, longing and frustration. Inside were bundles and bundles of letters written neatly in pen, in pencil, on thin blue airmail paper or headed army notepaper. Envelopes covered in postmarks, redirections, censor's stamps. A love affair in letters between two people who barely knew each other, thousands of miles apart, in the middle of a war, with no idea when or whether they would ever see each other again.
On September 5th, 1943, Chris Barker, a signalman stationed near Tobruk in North Africa, decided to write to a former work colleague, Bessie Moore, a Morse code interpreter at the Foreign Office back in London. The unexpected warmth of Bessie's reply changed their lives forever.
Chris and Bessie's love letters first appeared in Simon Garfield's book To the Letter. They toured literary festivals as part of Letters Live before being published in a book, My Dear Bessie.
Written by Chris Barker and Bessie Moore.
Letters compiled by Simon Garfield.
Adapted by Sara Davies.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
Cast:
Chris - Benedict Cumberbatch Bessie - Louise Brealey Irena - Jane Slavin
©2018 BBC Worldwide Ltd (P)2018 BBC Worldwide Ltd
How to Be Famous
Summary
A hilarious, heartfelt sequel to How to Build a Girl, the breakout novel from feminist sensation Caitlin Moran who the New York Times called, "rowdy and fearless...sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways." You can’t have your best friend be famous if you’re not famous. It doesn’t work. You’re emotional pen-friends. You can send each other letters - but you’re not doing anything together. You live in different countries. Johanna Morrigan (AKA Dolly Wilde) has it all: at 18, she lives in her own flat in London and writes for the coolest music magazine in Britain. But Johanna is miserable. Her best friend and man of her dreams John Kite has just made it big in 1994’s hot new Britpop scene. Suddenly John exists on another plane of reality: that of the Famouses. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Johanna hatches a plan: she will Saint Paul his Corinthians, she will Jimmy his Pinocchio - she will write a monthly column, by way of a manual to the famous, analyzing fame, its power, its dangers, and its amusing aspects. In stories, girls never win the girl - they are won. Well, Johanna will re-write the stories, and win John, through her writing. But as Johanna’s own star rises, an unpleasant one-night stand she had with a stand-up comedian, Jerry Sharp, comes back to haunt in her in a series of unfortunate consequences. How can a girl deal with public sexual shaming? Especially when her new friend, the up-and-coming feminist rock icon Suzanne Banks, is Jimmy Cricketing her? For anyone who has been a girl or known one, who has admired fame or judged it, and above all anyone who loves to laugh till their sides ache, How to Be Famous is a big-hearted, hilarious tale of fame and fortune - and all they entail.
©2018 Casa Bevron, Ltd. (P)2018 Penguin Books Ltd.
How to Be Famous
Summary
A hilarious, heartfelt sequel to How to Build a Girl, the breakout novel from feminist sensation Caitlin Moran who the New York Times called, "rowdy and fearless... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways." You can’t have your best friend be famous if you’re not famous. It doesn’t work. You’re emotional pen-friends. You can send each other letters - but you’re not doing anything together. You live in different countries. Johanna Morrigan (aka Dolly Wilde) has it all: at 18, she lives in her own flat in London and writes for the coolest music magazine in Britain. But Johanna is miserable. Her best friend and man of her dreams John Kite has just made it big in 1994’s hot new BritPop scene. Suddenly John exists on another plane of reality: that of the Famouses. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Johanna hatches a plan: she will Saint Paul his Corinthians, she will Jimmy his Pinocchio - she will write a monthly column, by way of a manual to the famous, analyzing fame, its power, its dangers, and its amusing aspects. In stories, girls never win the girl - they are won. Well, Johanna will re-write the stories, and win John, through her writing. But as Johanna’s own star rises, an unpleasant one-night stand she had with a stand-up comedian, Jerry Sharp, comes back to haunt in her in a series of unfortunate consequences. How can a girl deal with public sexual shaming? Especially when her new friend, the up-and-coming feminist rock icon Suzanne Banks, is Jimmy Cricketing her? For anyone who has been a girl or known one, who has admired fame or judged it, and above all anyone who loves to laugh till their sides ache, How to Be Famous is a big-hearted, hilarious tale of fame and fortune - and all they entail.
©2018 Casa Bevron, Ltd. (P)2018 Penguin Books, Ltd.
The Wolf Border
Summary
For almost a decade, Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the grey wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District. The earl's project harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness - though Rachel must contend with modern-day concessions to health and safety, public outrage, and political gain - and the return of the grey after hundreds of years coincides with her own regeneration: impending motherhood and reconciliation with her estranged family. The Wolf Border investigates the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness, both animal and human. It seeks to understand the most obsessive aspects of humanity: sex, love, and conflict; the desire to find answers to the question of our existence; those complex systems that govern the most superior creature on Earth.
©2014 Sarah Hall (P)2015 Audible, Ltd
The End We Start From
Summary
As London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place, shelter to shelter, to a desolate island and back again. The story traces fear and wonder, as the baby's small fists grasp at the first colors he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds. Written with poise and poeticism, The End We Start From is an indelible and elemental first book - a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a portentous tale of endurance in the face of ungovernable change.
©2017 Megan Hunter (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Letters of Note: Art
Summary
A surprising and varied collection of letters on the subject of art curated by the founder of the globally popular Letters of Note website. The first volume in the best-selling Letters of Note series was a collection of hundreds of the world's most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters, based on the seismically popular website of the same name - an online museum of correspondence visited by over 70 million people. From Virginia Woolf's heartbreaking suicide letter, to Queen Elizabeth II's recipe for drop scones sent to President Eisenhower; from the first recorded use of the expression "OMG" in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi's appeal for calm to Hitler; and from Iggy Pop's beautiful letter of advice to a troubled young fan, to Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable job application letter. Now, the curator of Letters of Note, Shaun Usher, gives us wonderful new volumes featuring letters organized around a universal theme. Featuring letters read by: Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Crystal Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Toby Jones, Ferdinand Kingsley, Jude Law, Helen McCrory, Stephen Mangan, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Strong and Meera Syal, and including bonus performances by Noel Fielding and Ian McKellen.
©2020 McClelland & Stewart (P)2020 McClelland & Stewart
Letters of Note: War
Summary
A powerful collection of letters on the theme of war, curated by the founder of the globally popular Letters of Note website. The first volume in the best-selling Letters of Note series was a collection of hundreds of the world's most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters, based on the seismically popular website of the same name - an online museum of correspondence visited by over 70 million people. Now, the curator of Letters of Note, Shaun Usher, gives us wonderful new volumes featuring letters organized around a universal theme. In this volume, Shaun Usher turns to the theme of war. There are few constants in life that weigh more heavily on the human race than our ceaseless engagement in acts of war. From time immemorial to the present day, across the world, wars have marked our history on earth like little else. Letters of Note: War brings together some of the most remarkable letters that encapsulate human experience of war, from unimaginable feats of courage and compassion, to unthinkable episodes of violence and horror. Includes letters by Kurt Vonnegut, Alexander Hamilton, Martha Gellhorn, and many more. Featuring letters read by Sanjeev Bhaskar, Louise Brealey, Simon Callow, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Danny Huston, Toby Jones, Ferdinand Kingsley, Jude Law, Natascha McElhone, Clarke Peters, Juliet Stevenson and Mark Strong. With bonus performances by Ben Kingsley, Colin Firth, and Taron Egerton.
©2020 McClelland & Stewart (P)2020 McClelland & Stewart
Whatever You Love
Summary
Short-listed for the Costa Book Award. Long-listed for the Orange (Bailey's) Prize. When two police officers knock on Laura's door, her life changes forever. Her nine-year-old daughter, Betty, has been killed in a hit-and-run car accident. When the death is ruled an accident, Laura takes revenge into her own hands. But will her daughter's killer be brought to justice? Laura's loss and bereavement reopen old wounds, and she is thrown back to the story of her passionate love affair with Betty's father, David, their marriage, and his subsequent love affair with another woman. Haunted by Laura's past and desire for revenge, Whatever You Love is a riveting psychological thriller that explores the lengths one mother is willing to go to for love. If you enjoy Whatever You Love, you might also like Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty.
©2018 Louise Doughty (P)2018 Faber Audio
The Art of Dying
Summary
Edinburgh, 1850. Despite being at the forefront of modern medicine, hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. But it is not just the deaths that dismay the esteemed Dr James Simpson - a whispering campaign seeks to blame him for the death of a patient in suspicious circumstances. Simpson's protégé Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher are determined to clear their patron's name. But with Raven battling against the dark side of his own nature and Sarah endeavouring to expand her own medical knowledge beyond what society deems acceptable for a woman, the pair struggle to understand the cause of the deaths. Will and Sarah must unite and plunge into Edinburgh's deadliest streets to clear Simpson's name. But soon they discover that the true cause of these deaths has evaded suspicion purely because it is so unthinkable.
©2019 Ambrose Parry (P)2019 Canongate Books Ltd
One Eye Open
Summary
If the lies don't kill you, the truth will.... An electrifying, high-octane thrill ride, the new must-listen stand-alone from a Sunday Times best seller. You won't be able to tear yourself away! Dark, gritty and always at the edge of your seat, this unforgettable new outing from master craftsman Paul Finch will appeal to fans of Stuart MacBride, Mari Hannah and Alex Cross. You can run.... A high-speed crash leaves a man and woman clinging to life. Neither of them carries ID. Their car has fake number plates. In their luggage: a huge amount of cash. Who are they? What are they hiding? And what were they running from? You can hide.... DS Lynda Hagen, once a brilliant detective, gave it all up to raise her family. But something about this case reignites a spark in her.... But you'll always sleep with... What begins as an investigation soon becomes an obsession. And it will lead her to a secret so dangerous that soon there will be nowhere left to hide. ...one eye open.
©2019 Paul Finch (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group
Exile: Journey on the Mayflower
Summary
A gripping series about one family's journey into the unknown aboard the Mayflower, starring Louise Brealey. What do you do when your beliefs are condemned by the rest of society? Sarah Hargreaves doesn't share her husband Matthew's desire to join the Puritan exiles, but when their son Benjamin is arrested on a trumped-up charge, they have little choice but to go. Things go rapidly from bad to worse and they decide to leave everything behind. Hoping to find peace and like-minded souls in a new religious community in America, they spend everything they have left on a ticket to sail on the Mayflower. Safely aboard ship their adventure really begins. But conditions are cramped, storms blast the ship and their daughter, Elizabeth, is very sick. Halfway across the vast Atlantic, there is no turning back.... Also included in this release is a bonus programme, The Mayflower - 400 years, in which Emily Buchanan explores the Pilgrims’ journey, their relationship with Native Americans and how their political and religious beliefs helped shape modern America. Cast: Sarah Hargreaves - Louise Brealey Matthew Hargreaves - Trystan Gravelle Ben - Joel MacCormack Elizabeth - Megan McInerney Saul Tregarron - Matthew Gravelle Captain Jones - John Cording Reverend Kerswell/Ghost Sailor/Minister - Marc Danbury Woman/Blackbird - Ashleigh Haddad Samoset - Daniel Taylor Directed by John Norton A BBC Cymru Wales Production The Mayflower - 400 years was produced by David Cook and Dan Tierney
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd