Audiobooks by Sophie Mackintosh

Permanence: A sleek and addictive modern love story from the Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Water Cure

"Brought to you by Penguin One of the most anticipated books of 2026 as chosen by Vogue, Stylist, Forbes, Oprah Daily and LitHub This is the story of an affair. Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing stolen afternoons in hotel rooms, their time together painfully sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there. They find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar city: a place where adulterers can live openly as couples, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice. Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on the table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible. As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other. How do you know when you’ve found true love? How much would you sacrifice to keep hold of it? And how long can you stay in paradise before the cracks start to show? From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure and Cursed Bread comes an intoxicating modern love story. Permanence is a thrillingly erotic and sharply relatable portrait of longing and obsession, intimacy and betrayal, possession and dispossession. 'Like Severance for relationships' Oprah Daily ‘Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out’ Lauren Elkin ‘It will stay with me for a long time’ Monica Heisey © Sophie Mackintosh 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026"

Sophie Mackintosh (Author), Florence Howard (Narrator)

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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)

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Blue Ticket

"Brought to you by Penguin. Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Water Cure RECOMMENDED READING FOR 2020 by Stylist, Evening Standard, Esquire, Red, Daily Mail, Oprah Magazine, LitHub, and Emma Roberts's Belletrist Book Club '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 'Definitely don't miss the return of Sophie Mackintosh... She's amazing' Stylist, Best Reads of Autumn 2020 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. 'Dreamlike, tense, compelling, [with] a pitch-perfect ending' The New York Times 'Gripping, ethereal, atmospheric' Sunday Times 'Thoughtful and haunting' Observer 'Terrifying and enchanting in equal measure' LitHub 'Blue Ticket will worms its way under your skin and haunt your dreams' Red © Sophie Mackintosh 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020"

Sophie Mackintosh (Author), Freya Mavor (Narrator)

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The Water Cure: LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018

"*Blue Ticket, a chilling new novel about freedom, fate and motherhood - out 7 May 2020* The Water Cure British Vogue 'Star of the Future' for 2020 Independent Best Books of the Decade 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)

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