Audiobooks by Louisa Young

Of the Flesh: 17 Stories of Modern Horror

"'Outstandingly weird and memorable' GUARDIAN 'Deliciously creepy' NEW SCIENTIST Fear never dies… Featuring stories from Susan Barker, J K Chukwu, Bridget Collins, Mariana Enríquez, Michel Faber, Lewis Hancox, Emilia Hart, Ainslie Hogarth, Robert Lautner, Adorah Nworah, Irenosen Okojie, Lucy Rose, Lionel Shriver, James Smythe, Lavie Tidhar, Francine Toon, Evie Wyld and Louisa Young. These stories from eighteen master storytellers will curdle your blood, haunt your dreams and redefine terror. From a hungry young woman who is not what she seems, to a boy who has taken his mother's advice a little too seriously; from disfigured girls willing to pay any price to fit in, to an immigrant who cannot escape his tormentor in his new home country; from a new home with a sinister secret, to the discovery that a long-dead parent’s corpse is perfectly preserved decades later; this collection plumbs the depths of the psyche and dredges up some very modern horrors. READERS ARE OBSESSED 'Stunning' 'Well-plotted and horrifying' 'Visceral, creepy, gory… stays in your head long after reading them' 'It's so satisfying to turn to the next story in an anthology like this and be pretty confident it's going to be a banger… bravo' 'Spine-tingling… I was gripped and it kept me up at night as I just wanted to read one more story' 'Often unusual, always unique… a wildly eclectic cornucopia of horror'"

Adorah Nworah, Ainslie Hogarth, Bridget Collins, Emilia Hart, Evie Wyld, Francine Toon, J K Chukwu, James Smythe, Lavie Tidhar, Louisa Young, Lucy Rose, Michel Faber, Robert Lautner, Susan Barker, et al (Author), Various (Narrator)

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Twelve Months and a Day

"People die. Love doesn’t. ‘A bitter-sweet pang in my heart’ Monique Roffey ‘A beautiful book. Insanely romantic and utterly convincing’ Julie Myerson ‘A wonderful and inventive novel, sorrowful and hopeful in equal measure. It was a true pleasure to read’ Miranda Cowley Heller ‘Louisa Young is the great chronicler of romantic love and the pain of its loss’ Linda Grant ‘Heart-stoppingly romantic… A lovely, moving, ultimately hopeful read’ Mirror ‘What a writer… so beautifully earthed in the everyday. Terrific’ Elizabeth Buchan ‘A modern day Truly Madly Deeply… Rasmus and Roisin both lose their partners, but the ghosts of Nico and Jay stay, unable to leave their loved ones alone as the broken-hearted pair find comfort in each other. Beautifully written, this is a haunting love story – literally’ Best magazine, Must-Reads ‘A skilfully calibrated love-after-death tale, it’s a four course feast of hearts broken, hearts mended, of songs, laughter, old regrets and fresh desire, that demands a major film deal’ Patrick Gale ‘A wonderful novel, charming and surprising, filled with loss and its triumphant opposites’ Susie Boyt ‘Thoughtful, philosophical and clever, it is also funny, and full of poetry, and powered by an unflagging and irresistible belief in the redemptive power of love’ Perspectives magazine Rasmus and Jay, Róisín and Nico – two beautiful, ordinary love stories, cut short by death. Jay and Nico don’t even believe in ghosts, yet they seem to be… still here. Still in love with Rasmus and Roísín. And maddeningly powerless. Both are incapable of leaving the living alone: Jay plays matchmaker, convinced that Rasmus and Róisín can heal each other; Nico, plagued by jealousy, doesn’t agree. Rasmus and Róisín are just trying to navigate their newly widowed lives. But all four of them are thinking the same thing: what is love, after death? What is it for? And what are we to do with it?"

Louisa Young (Author), Isabel Adomakoh Young (Narrator)

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I Am Heathcliff: Stories Inspired by Wuthering Heights

"16 modern fiction superstars shine a startling light on the romance and pain of the infamous literary pair Heathcliff and Cathy. Short stories to stir the heart and awaken vital conversation about love. Sixteen stories inspired by Wuthering Heights. In ‘Terminus’ a young woman hides in an empty Brighton hotel; in ‘Thicker Than Blood’ a man sits in a hot tub stalking his newly-married love on social media; and in ‘A bird half-eaten’ an amateur boxer prepares for a match. A woman recalls the ‘Heathcliffs I Have Known’ and the physical danger she has borne at their hands; in ‘Anima’ a child and a fox are unified in one startling moment of violence; and in ‘One Letter Different’ two teenagers walk the moors and face up to their respective buried secrets. Curated by Kate Mosse and commissioned for Emily Brontë’s bicentenary year in 2018, these fresh, modern stories pulse with the raw beauty and pain of love and are as timely as they are illuminating. The full list of contributors is: Leila Aboulela, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Joanna Cannon, Alison Case, Juno Dawson, Louise Doughty, Sophie Hannah, Anna James, Erin Kelly, Dorothy Koomson, Grace McCleen, Lisa McInerney, Laurie Penny, Nikesh Shukla, Michael Stewart and Louisa Young."

Alison Case, Anna James, Hanan al-Shaykh, Joanna Cannon, Juno Dawson, Leila Aboulela, Louisa Young, Louise Doughty, Nikesh Shukla, Sophie Hannah (Author), Dami Olukoya, Freddie Gaminara, Karen Cogan, Lara Sawalha, Lucy Brownhill (Narrator)

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You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol

"‘Extraordinarily powerful’ Emma Thompson There are a million love stories, and a million stories of addiction. This one is transcendent. Louisa Young met Robert Lockhart when they were both 17. Their stop-start romance lasted decades, in which time he became a celebrated composer and she, an acclaimed novelist. This is both a compelling portrait of a lifelong love affair, and an incredibly affecting guide to how the partner of a 'charismatic, infuriating, adorable, self-sabotaging’ alcoholic can find the strength to survive when the disease rips both their lives apart. ‘Rich and moving and beautifully written’ The Times ‘Spectacular. I can’t stop thinking about it’ Cathy Rentzenbrink ‘Extraordinarily candid’ Evening Standard ‘Beautiful, and heartbreaking, and true’ Sam Baker, The Pool ‘Moving, harrowing and tirelessly empathetic’ Daily Express"

Louisa Young (Author), Louisa Young (Narrator)

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Devotion

"From the bestselling author of My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You and The Heroes’ Welcome, Louisa Young's Devotion is a novel of family, love, race and politics set during the electric change of the 1930s. Tom loves Nenna. Nenna loves her father. Her father loves Mussolini. Ideals and convictions are not always so clear in the murky years between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second. For Tom and Kitty Locke, children of the damaged WW1 generation, visiting their cousin Nenna in Rome is a pure joy. For their adoptive parents Nadine and Riley, though, the ground is still shifting underfoot. Nobody knew in 1919 that the children they were bearing would be just ripe for the next war in 1939; nobody knew, in 1935, the implications of an Italian Jewish family supporting Mussolini. Meanwhile Peter Locke and Mabel Zachary have found each other again together in London, itself a city reborn but riddled with its own intolerances. As the heat rises across Europe, voices grow louder and everyone must brace once more to decide what should bring them together, and what must drive them apart. Music composed by Robert Lockhart. Used by permission of Faber Music Ltd."

Louisa Young (Author), Eve Karpf (Narrator)

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The Heroes’ Welcome

"The Heroes’ Welcome is the incandescent sequel to the bestselling R&J pick My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You. Its evocation of a time deeply wounded by the pain of WW1 will capture and beguile readers fresh to Louisa Young’s wonderful writing, and those previously enthralled by the stories of Nadine and Riley, Rose, Peter and Julia. LONDON, APRIL 1919. THE GREAT WAR HAS ENDED. In a flurry of spring blossom, childhood sweethearts Nadine Waverney and Rilery Purefoy are married. Those who have survived the war are, in a way, home. But Riley is wounded and disfigured; normality seems incomprehensible, and love unfathomable. Honeymooning in a battered, liberated Europe, they long for a marriage made of love and passion rather than dependence and pity. At Locke Hill in Kent, Riley’s former CO Major Peter Locke is obsessed by Homer. His hysterical wife, Julia, and the young son they barely know attempt to navigate family life, but are confounded by the ghosts and memories of Peter’s war. Despite all this, there is the glimmer of a real future in the distance: Rose Locke, Peter’s cousin and Riley’s former nurse, finds that independence might be hers for the taking, after all. For those who fought, those who healed and those who stayed behind, 1919 is a year of accepting realities, holding to hope and reaching after new beginnings. The Heroes’ Welcome is a brave and brilliant evocation of a time deeply wounded by the pain of war. It is as devastating as it is inspiring."

Louisa Young (Author), Dan Stevens (Narrator)

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My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

"Set on the Western Front, in London and in Paris, MY DEAR I WANTED TO TELL YOU is a moving and brilliant novel of love, class and sex in wartime, and how war affects those left behind as well as those who fight. While Riley Purefoy and Peter Locke fight for their country, their survival and their sanity in the trenches of Flanders, Nadine Waveney, Julia Locke and Rose Locke do what they can at home. Beautiful, obsessive Julia and gentle, eccentric Peter are married: each day Julia goes through rituals to prepare for her beloved husband’s return. Nadine and Riley, only eighteen when the war starts, and with problems of their own already, want above all to make promises – but how can they when the future is not in their hands? And Rose? Well, what did happen to the traditionally brought-up women who lost all hope of marriage, because all the young men were dead?"

Louisa Young (Author), Dan Stevens (Narrator)

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