Audiobooks by Isabel Colegate

The Shooting Party: A Novel

"A leisurely weekend among the British gentry reveals the cracks in their upper-class society in this 'beautifully crafted' historical fiction novel set in pre-WWI England (Washington Post). It is the autumn of 1913. Sir Randolph Nettleby has assembled a brilliant array of guests at his Oxfordshire estate for the biggest hunt of the season. An army of gamekeepers, beaters, and servants has rehearsed the intricate age–old ritual, the gentlemen are falling into the prescribed mode of fellowship and sporting rivalry, the ladies intrigued by the latest gossip and fashion. Everything about this splendid weekend would seem a perfect consummation of the pleasures afforded the privileged in Edwardian England. And yet it is not: the moral and social code of this group is not so secure as it appears. Competition beyond the bounds of sportsmanship, revulsion at the slaughter of the animals, anger at the inequities of class—these forces are about to rise up and engulf the assured social peace, a peace that can last only a brief while longer. In imagining Sir Randolph's shooting party, wrote The Spectator, Miss Colegate has found a perfect metaphor for the passing of a way of life."

Isabel Colegate (Author), Jayne Entwistle (Narrator)

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The Blackmailer

"Bloomsbury presents The Blackmailer by Isabel Colegate, read by Antonia Beamish The glittering, sharp and sinister work of one of our most incisive and wickedly funny satirists; 'Isabel Colegate has no rival' (The Times) 'What we feel for each other is really a passion for power,' said Judith. 'We want to destroy each other by making the other fall in love with us.' Judith Lane, not-quite-beautiful but charmingly serious, is the young widow of the war hero Anthony Lane, and an editor at the successful if rather rakish publisher Hanescu Lane & Co. Ltd. But one evening the harmonious routine of Judith’s life is interrupted when she receives her first visit from Baldwin Reeves, who reveals that Anthony’s wartime adventures were not quite as glorious as the newspaper reports would have her believe. To protect Anthony’s family from the scandal, Judith reluctantly acquiesces to the repellent but attractive Reeves’s demands – but both blackmailer and blackmailee soon find themselves out of their depth in ways they could not have anticipated. Darkly funny, strangely sexy, and glittering with Isabel Colegate’s scalpel-sharp wit, The Blackmailer is a savage and sinister comic classic. P 2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC C 2024 Isabel Colegate"

Isabel Colegate (Author), Antonia Beamish (Narrator)

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Statues in a Garden

"Bloomsbury presents Statues in a Garden by Isabel Colegate, read by Kristin Atherton. ‘Just the right mixture of doomed fun, melancholy and faintly lascivious despair’ Observer ‘I am afraid I have something to tell you. It is that we are all about to be destroyed.’ 1914. The old standards are going. There is bitterness in politics, talk of civil war in Ireland. But all this means little to Cynthia Weston, attractive wife of cabinet member Aylmer Weston, and her nephew by marriage Philip. They are caught up in the charmed, perilous toils of a mutual passion that will destroy all they hold most dear – while the shadow of war lengthens and darkens, ready to swallow their world whole. A captivating portrait of a lost world, Statues in a Garden is a rediscovered masterpiece by one of the most important and neglected British female writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. C 1964 Isabel Colegate P 2021 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"

Isabel Colegate (Author), Kristin Atherton (Narrator)

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Orlando King

"Bloomsbury presents Orlando King by Isabel Colegate, read by Antonia Beamish. The masterpiece of one of the most important and overlooked British women writers of the twentieth century, with a new introduction by Melissa Harrison; 'Isabel Colegate has no rival' (The Times) 'If you are curious as to why Britain is still ruled by a tiny cadre of not-very-introspective aristo-capitalists, Orlando King is essential reading’ Sunday Times ‘Colegate’s sharp-eyed trilogy about a young man on the make in 1930s London feels particularly resonant right now, given its acute take on male privilege and power’ i paper, Summer Reading Picks 2020 'An extraordinary achievement' Frances Wilson, Times Literary Supplement, Summer Reading Picks 2020 Orlando King is a trilogy about a beautiful young man, raised in a remote and eccentric wilderness, arriving in 1930s London and setting the world of politics ablaze. In a time of bread riots and hunger marches, with the spectre of Fascism casting an ever lengthening shadow over Europe, Orlando glidingly cuts a swathe through the thickets of business, the corridors of politics, the pleasure gardens of the Cliveden set, acquiring wealth, adulation, a beautiful wife, and a seat in Parliament. But the advent of war brings with it Orlando’s downfall; and his daughter Agatha, cloistered with him in his banishment, is left to pick through the rubble of his smoking, ruined legacy. Elegant and muscular, powerful and razor-sharp, Orlando King is a bildungsroman, Greek tragedy and political saga all in one; a glittering exorcism of the inter-war generation’s demons to rival the work of Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark."

Isabel Colegate (Author), Antonia Beamish (Narrator)

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