Audiobooks by Louisa Young

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, Kate Mosse, 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

'Spectacular. I can't stop thinking about it. Louisa Young is a beautiful, beautiful writer' Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love This brutal, beautiful memoir from award-winning novelist Louisa Young is a heartbreaking portrayal of love, grief and the merciless grip of addiction. Louisa first 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. Always snapping at their heels was Robert's alcoholism, a helpless, ferocious dependency that affected his personality before crippling and finally, despite five years of hard-won sobriety, killing him. There are a million love stories, and a million stories of addiction. This one is truly transcendent. It is at once a compelling portrait of a unique and charismatic man; a bittersweet reflection on an all-consuming love affair; and a completely honest and incredibly affecting guide to how the partner of an alcoholic can possibly survive when the disease rips both their lives apart. This is a hugely important book - raw and unflinching but also uplifting and elegiac, it should be essential reading for anybody who's ever lost someone they loved.

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: A Novel

April 1919. Six months have passed since the armistice that ended the Great War. But new battles face those who have survived. Only 23, former soldier Riley Purefoy and his bride, Nadine Waveney, have their whole lives ahead of them. But Riley's injuries from the war have created awkward tensions between the couple, scars that threaten to shatter their marriage before it has truly begun. Peter and Julia Locke are facing their own trauma. Peter has become a recluse, losing himself in drink to forget the horrors of the war. Desperate to reach her husband, Julia tries to soothe his bitterness, but their future together is uncertain. Drawn together in the aftermath of the war, the couples become tightly intertwined. Haunted by loss, guilt, and dark memories, contending with uncertainty, anger, and pain, they are left with the question: is love strong enough to help them move forward? The incandescent follow up to the international bestseller My Dear I Want to Tell You, The Heroes' Welcome is a powerful and intimate novel chronicling the turbulence of 1919 a year of perilous beginnings, disturbing realities, and glimmerings of hope.

Louisa Young (Author), Dan Stevens (Narrator)

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My Dear I Wanted to Tell You: A Novel

The lives of two very different couples, an officer and his aristocratic wife, and a young soldier and his childhood sweetheart, are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war.At eighteen years old, working-class Riley Purefoy and posh Nadine Waveney have promised each other the future, but when war erupts across Europe, everything they hold to be true is thrown into question. Dispatched to the trenches, Riley forges a bond of friendship with his charismatic commanding officer, Peter Locke, as they fight for their survival. Yet it is Locke's wife, Julia, who must cope with her husband's transformation into a distant shadow of the man she once knew. Meanwhile, Nadine and Riley's bonds are tested as well by a terrible injury and the imperfect rehabilitation that follows it, as both couples struggle to weather the storm of war that rages about them.Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight, and those who don't, and a poignant testament to the enduring power of love.

Louisa Young (Author), Dan Stevens (Narrator)

Audiobook

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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