Audiobooks by Tessa Hadley

Free Love: ‘So real and humane and utterly transporting’ - Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss

Brought to you by Penguin. From Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past, comes a compulsive new novel about one woman's sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London 1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family's upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them. With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters' inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive, irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our lives. 'She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today.' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 'Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.' Hilary Mantel © Tessa Hadley 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Tessa Hadley (Author), Abigail Thaw (Narrator)

Audiobook

Late in the Day

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley, read by Abigail Thaw. Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been close friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach was the sanest and kindest of them all, the irreplaceable one they couldn't afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness. Late in the Day explores the tangled webs at the centre of our most intimate relationships, to expose how beneath the seemingly dependable arrangements we make for our lives lie infinite alternate configurations. Ingeniously moving between past and present and through the intricacies of her characters' thoughts and interactions, Tessa Hadley once again shows that she has 'become one of this country's great contemporary novelists. She is equipped with an armoury of techniques and skills that may yet secure her a position as the greatest of them.' (Anthony Quinn Guardian)

Tessa Hadley (Author), Abigail Thaw (Narrator)

Audiobook

Thalia Book Club: Tessa Hadley, Late In The Day

The acclaimed British novelist and short story master who "recruits admires with each book" (Hilary Mantel) discusses her latest novel with fellow author Colm Tóibín (House of Names). Ingeniously moving between past and present, Late in the Day exposes how infinite alternate configurations lie beneath the seemingly dependable arrangements we make for our lives. With a reading by Rita Wolf (An Ordinary Muslim).

Tessa Hadley (Author), Colm Toibin, Rita Wolf (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bad Dreams and Other Stories

The award-winning author of The Past once again "crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural" (Washington Post), in a collection of stories that elevate the mundane into the exceptional. The author of six critically acclaimed novels, Tessa Hadley has proven herself to be the champion of revealing the hidden depths in the deceptively simple. In these short stories it’s the ordinary things that turn out to be most extraordinary: the history of a length of fabric or a forgotten jacket. Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance and a new baby; a child awake in the night explores the familiar rooms of her home, made strange by the darkness; a housekeeper caring for a helpless old man uncovers secrets from his past. The first steps into a turning point and a new life are made so easily and carelessly: each of these stories illuminate crucial moments of transition, often imperceptible to the protagonists. A girl accepts a lift in a car with some older boys; a young woman reads the diaries she discovers while housesitting. Small acts have large consequences, some that can reverberate across decades; private fantasies can affect other people, for better and worse. The real things that happen to people, the accidents that befall them, are every bit as mysterious as their longings and their dreams. Bad Dreams and Other Stories demonstrates yet again that Tessa Hadley "puts on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own. She is a true master" (Lily King, author of Euphoria).

Tessa Hadley (Author), Emma Gregory (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bad Dreams and Other Stories

In these short stories it's the ordinary things that turn out to be most extraordinary. Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance, a child awake in the night explores her home, a housekeeper caring for an elderly man uncovers secrets from his past. The stories focus in on crucial moments of transition. Small acts have large consequences and some of them reverberate across decades. The real things that happen to people, the accidents that befall them, are every bit as mysterious as their longings and their dreams.

Tessa Hadley (Author), Emma Gregory (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Past

Three sisters and a brother meet up in their grandparents' old house for three long, hot summer weeks. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past, but now they may have to sell it. And under the idyllic surface, there are tensions. Secrets are uncovered and passions erupt as a way of life - bourgeois, literate, ritualised - winds down to its inevitable end.

Tessa Hadley (Author), Antonia Beamish (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Past

Three sisters, a brother, and their children assemble at their country house one last time before it is sold. The house is filled with memories of their shared past yet beneath the idyllic surface, hidden passions, devastating secrets, and dangerous hostilities threaten to consume them. Sophisticated and sleek, Roland's new wife arouses his sister' jealousies. Passion erupts where it's least expected, shattering the quiet self-possession of Harriet, the eldest sister. Over the course of this summer holiday, the family's stories and silences intertwine, small disturbances build into familial crises, and a way of life-bourgeois, literate, ritualized, Anglican—winds down to its inevitable end.

Tessa Hadley (Author), Caroline Lennon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Married Love

Lottie announces that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is nineteen but looks five years younger. Her fiancé is Edgar Lennox, a lecturer at Lottie's university, forty-five years her senior. We follow as Lottie's life unfolds; it is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments.

Tessa Hadley (Author), Anne Dover, Judith Boyd, Multiple Narrators (Narrator)

Audiobook

The London Train

Acclaimed author Tessa Hadley was longlisted for the Guardian first book award for her novel Accidents in the Home. In The London Train, Paul leaves his family to search for Pia, his daughter from his first marriage. He finds her pregnant and living in less than ideal conditions-but with an outlook on life that's strangely compelling. Paul decides to start a new life and joins Pia in London. But he doesn't know that a chance encounter with a desperate woman will change his destiny.

Tessa Hadley (Author), Juanita McMahon (Narrator)

Audiobook

The London Train

A compelling and beautifully written new novel from the acclaimed author of The Master Bedroom Paul lives in the Welsh countryside with his wife Elise, and their two young children. Over in London, Cora plans to move back to Cardiff, to the house she has inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage, and the constrictions and disappointments of her life. Connecting them is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and for Cora.

Tessa Hadley (Author), Juanita Mcmahon (Narrator)

Audiobook