Audiobooks by Sophie Mackintosh

Cursed Bread: Longlisted for the Women’s Prize

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure and Blue Ticket comes a chilling new feminist fable, based on the true story of an unsolved historical mystery... If you eat the bread, you'll die, he said. The statement made no sense, but it filled me with an electric dread. Elodie is the baker's wife. A plain, unremarkable person, largely ignored by her husband and everyone else, she burns with the secret hunger to be extraordinary, to be desired, to be seen. One day a charismatic new couple appear in town - the ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet - and Elodie quickly falls under their spell. All summer long she stalks them through the shining streets: inviting herself into their home, trying to decipher their coded conversations, longing to possess them at any cost. Meanwhile, beneath the tranquil surface of daily life, strange things are happening. Six horses are found dead in a sun-drenched field, laid out neatly on the ground like an offering. Widows see their lost husbands walking up the river in the night, coming back to claim them. A teenage boy throws himself into the bonfire at the midsummer feast. A dark intoxication is spreading through the town, and when Elodie finally understands her role in it, it will be too late to stop. Audacious and mesmerising, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory's hall of mirrors, a fable of obsession and transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes. Praise for Sophie Mackintosh: 'Be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes' Deborah Levy on Blue Ticket 'An extraordinary debut - otherworldly, luminous, precise' Guardian on The Water Cure 'Dreamlike, tense, compelling, with a pitch-perfect ending' The New York Times on Blue Ticket 'An unsettling dark fantasy... It lingers long after the final page' Daily Telegraph on The Water Cure 'Blue Ticket will worm its way under your skin and haunt your dreams' Red ©2023 Sophie Mackintosh (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Sophie Mackintosh (Author), Genevieve Gaunt (Narrator)

Audiobook

Blue Ticket

Brought to you by Penguin. From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED author of The Water Cure 'The cool intensity and strange beauty of Blue Ticket is a wonder - be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes' Deborah Levy, author of Hot Milk 'A gripping, sinister fable' Margaret Atwood on The Water Cure Discover this chilling new novel about motherhood, free will and fate, human longing and animal instinct... Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And, once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one? Blue Ticket is a devastating enquiry into free will and the fraught space of motherhood. Bold and chilling, it pushes beneath the skin of female identity and patriarchal violence, to the point where human longing meets our animal bodies. 'This book left me breathless - it is gloriously subversive in its exploration of motherhood and desire. I'll be pressing it on everyone' Angela Chadwick, author of XX 'Strange and luminous, spare and precise... A thrilling exploration of what it means to follow one's own longing to the point of destruction and beyond' Rosie Price, author of What Red Was 'Blue Ticket manages to be both claustrophobic and expansive, dream-like and heart-stoppingly tense. You will want to languish in its world for a very long time' Lara Williams, author of Supper Club 'Utterly exquisite - clever and brilliant and heartbreaking. From the dusty road to the salving forest, I absolutely adored it' Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Adults and Animals © Sophie Mackintosh 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Sophie Mackintosh (Author), Freya Mavor (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Water Cure: LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh, read by Hannah Murray, Gemma Whelan and Morfydd Clark. Once upon a time, damaged women came here to be cured. We took them in, fed them glasses of our clean, good water, let them scream at the waves till their lips split like ripe fruit. Now no one is left but my sisters and me. King died a year ago, quite suddenly. Mother has vanished, no one knows where. And the safe compound they built around us, far away from the toxic world, has finally been breached. Three men arrived last week, washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent. We remember now what our father taught us. 'If the men come to you, show yourself some mercy. Don't stick around and wait for them to put you out of your misery.' 'Immensely assured, calmly devastating. This is a gem of a novel and I was bowled over by it' -Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered 'I loved this book. It rushes you through to the end on a tide of tension and closely held panic. Eerie, electric, beautiful' - Daisy Johnson, author of Fen 'Creepy and delightful - it has a pinch of Shirley Jackson, a dash of chlorine, and an essence all of its own' - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You 'Devastating. A work of cool, claustrophobic beauty' Eli Goldstone, author of Strange Heart Beating

Sophie Mackintosh (Author), Gemma Whelan, Hannah Murray, Morfydd Clark (Narrator)

Audiobook