Audiobooks by William Boyd

Ordinary Thunderstorms: A Novel Audiobook

One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything'home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone'never to get them back. The police are searching for him. There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in a huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere to go but down'underground. He decides to join that vast army of the disappeared and the missing who throng London's lowest levels as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so spectacularly. Adam's quest will take him all along the river Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the gritty East End, and on the way he will encounter all manner of London's denizens'aristocrats, prostitutes, evangelists, and policewomen'and version after new version of himself. Ordinary Thunderstorms, William Boyd's electric follow-up to his award-winning Restless, is a profound and gripping novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.

William Boyd (Author), Gideon Emery (Narrator)

Audiobook

Brazzaville Beach

'I live on Brazzaville Beach... I am here because two sets of strange and extraordinary events happened to me... One in England, first, and then one in Africa.' On Brazzaville Beach, on the edge of Africa, Hope Clearwater examines the complex circumstances that brought her there. Sifting the details for evidence of her own innocence or guilt, she tells her engrossing story with a blunt and beguiling honesty that not only intrigues and disturbs but is also completely enthralling.

William Boyd (Author), Harriet Walter (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

It is Amory's photographer uncle Greville who gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography and unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future. Her search for life, love and artistic expression will take her to the demi monde of Berlin of the late 20s, to New York of the 30s, to the Blackshirt riots in London and to France in the Second World War where she becomes one of the first women war photographers.

William Boyd (Author), Jilly Bond (Narrator)

Audiobook

Love is Blind

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Love is Blind by William Boyd. Love is Blind is William Boyd's sweeping, heart-stopping new novel - set at the end of the 19th century, it follows the fortunes of Brodie Moncur, a young Scottish musician, about to embark on the story of his life. When Brodie is offered a job in Paris, he seizes the chance to flee Edinburgh and his tyrannical clergyman father, and begin a wildly different new chapter in his life. In Paris, a fateful encounter with a famous pianist irrevocably changes his future - and sparks an obsessive love affair with a beautiful Russian soprano, Lika Blum. Moving from Paris to St Petersburg to Edinburgh and back again, Brodie's love for Lika and its dangerous consequences pursue him around Europe and beyond, during an era of overwhelming change as the 19th century becomes the 20th. Love is Blind is a tale of dizzying passion and brutal revenge; of artistic endeavour and the illusions it creates; of all the possibilities that life can offer, and how cruelly they can be snatched away. At once an intimate portrait of one man's life and an expansive exploration of the beginning of the 20th century, Love is Blind is a masterly new novel from one of Britain's best loved storytellers.

William Boyd (Author), Roy Mcmillan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Trio

Brought to you by Penguin. A producer. A novelist. An actress. It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There are riots in Paris and the Vietnam War is out of control. While the world is reeling our three characters are involved in making a Swingin' Sixties movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. Elfrida is drowning her writer's block in vodka; Talbot, coping with the daily dysfuntion of making a film, is hiding something in a secret apartment; and the glamorous Anny is wondering why the CIA is suddenly so interested in her. But the show must go on and, as it does, the trio's private worlds begin to take over their public ones. Pressures build inexorably - someone's going to crack. Or maybe they all will. From one of Britain's best loved writers comes an exhilarating, tender novel that asks the vital questions: what makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn't? PRAISE FOR WILLIAM BOYD 'The ultimate in immersive fiction . . . magnificent' Sunday Times 'A finely judged performance: a deft and resonant alchemy of fact and fiction, of literary myth and imagination' Guardian on Love is Blind 'William Boyd has probably written more classic books than any of his contemporaries' Daily Telegraph 'Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation' Sebastian Faulks © William Boyd 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

William Boyd (Author), Hannah Arterton (Narrator)

Audiobook

Solo

It's 1969, and, having just celebrated his forty-fifth birthday, James Bond, British special agent 007, is summoned to headquarters to receive an unusual assignment. Zanzarim, a troubled West African nation, is being ravaged by a bitter civil war, and M directs Bond to quash the rebels threatening the established regime. Bond's arrival in Africa marks the start of a feverish mission to discover the forces behind this brutal war,and he soon realizes the situation is far from straightforward. Piece by piece, Bond uncovers the real cause of the violence in Zanzarim, revealing a twisting conspiracy that extends further than he ever imagined. Moving from rebel battlefields in West Africa to the closed doors of intelligence offices in London and Washington, this novel is at once a gripping thriller, a tensely plotted story full of memorable characters and breathtaking twists, and a masterful study of power and how it is wielded,a brilliant addition to the James Bond canon. James Bond and 007 are registered trademarks of Danjaq LLC, used under licence by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.

William Boyd (Author), Dominic West (Narrator)

Audiobook

Restless: A Novel

"I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone. Three decades later the secrets of Sally's past still haunt her. Someone is trying to kill her and at last she has decided to trust Ruth with her story. Ruth, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of her own life as a young single mother with an unfinished graduate degree and escalating dependence on alcohol. She is drawn deeper and deeper into the astonishing events of her mother's past-the mysterious death of Eva's beloved brother, her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward American involvement in the war, her dangerous romantic entanglement. Now Sally wants to find the man who recruited her for the secret service, and she needs Ruth's help. Restless is a brilliant espionage audiobook and a vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Full of tension and drama, and based on a remarkable chapter of Anglo-American history, this is listening at its finest.

William Boyd (Author), Rosamund Pike, Rosemund Pike (Narrator)

Audiobook

Any Human Heart: A Novel

Bestselling author William Boyd'the novelist who has been called a 'master storyteller' (Chicago Tribune) and 'a gutsy writer who is good company to keep' (Time) 'here gives us his most entertaining, sly, and compelling novel to date. The novel evokes the tumult, events, and iconic faces of our time as it tells the story of Logan Mountstuart'writer, lover, and man of the world'through his intimate journals. It is the 'riotous and disorganized reality' of Mountstuart's eighty-five years in all their extraordinary, tragic, and humorous aspects. The journals begin with his boyhood in Montevideo, Uruguay, then move to Oxford in the 1920s and the publication of his first book, then on to Paris where he meets Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, et al., and to Spain, where he covers the civil war. During World War II, we see him as an agent for naval intelligence, becoming embroiled in a murder scandal that involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar years bring him to New York as an art dealer in the world of 1950s abstract expressionism, then on to West Africa, to London where he has a run-in with the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and, finally, to France where, in his old age, he acquires a measure of hard-won serenity. This is a moving, ambitious, and richly conceived novel that summons up the heroics and follies of twentieth-century life. 'Boyd does such a nimble job of ventriloquism in the book's opening sections that we find ourselves forgetting that Mountstuart is a fictional character.''New York Times

William Boyd (Author), Simon Vance, Simon Vance (Narrator)

Audiobook

Waiting for Sunrise: A Novel

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment of a sexual nature, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is stunned, and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape-with the help of two mysterious British diplomats-saves him from trial. But the frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that steadily dismantles Lysander's life as he knows it. He returns to a London on the cusp of war, hoping to win back his onetime fiancée and banish from memory his traumatic ordeals abroad, but Vienna haunts him at every turn. The men who helped coordinate his escape recruit him to carry out the brutal murder of a complete stranger. His lover from Vienna shows up nonchalantly at a party, ready to resume their liaison. Unable to live an ordinary existence, he is plunged into the dangerous theater of wartime intelligence-a world of sex, scandal, and spies, where lines of truth and deception blur with every waking day. Lysander must now discover the key to a secret code that is threatening Britain's safety, and use all his skills to keep this murky world of suspicion and betrayal from invading every corner of his life. Moving from Vienna to London's West End, from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a mesmerizing journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller, and a literary tour de force.

William Boyd (Author), Robert Ian Mackenzie (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sweet Caress

Born into Edwardian England, Amory's first memory is of her father standing on his head. She has memories of him returning on leave during the First World War. But his absences, both actual and emotional, are what she chiefly remembers. It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, who, when he gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future.A spell at boarding school ends abruptly and Amory begins an apprenticeship with Greville in London, photographing socialites for the magazine Beau Monde. But Amory is hungry for more and her search for life, love, and artistic expression will take her to the demi monde of Berlin of the late '20s, to New York of the '30s, to the blackshirt riots in London, and to France in the Second World War where she becomes one of the first women war photographers. Her desire for experience will lead Amory to further wars, to lovers, husbands, and children as she continues to pursue her dreams and battle her demons. In this enthralling story of a life fully lived, illustrated with "found" period photographs, William Boyd has created a sweeping panorama of some of the most defining moments of modern history, told through the camera lens of one unforgettable woman, Amory Clay. It is his greatest achievement to date. Reviews "One of the very best prose stylists and storytellers in the English language." (The Atlantic) "Superbly written . . . One of the most smoothly readable novels of the year." (Chicago Tribune on Restless) "Its pleasures are countless . . . Supremely entertaining." (Washington Post Book World on Any Human Heart) "Few contemporary writers are able to evoke the ambiance and drama of our recent past as forcefully as Boyd . . . And [his] characters are as beguiling as his prose." (Washington Post Book World on Waiting for Sunrise) Entertaining and seemingly effortless in their fluency, [Boyd's] novels conceal insights into human behavior that are more intricate than may first appear. (Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review, on Waiting for Sunrise) About the Author William Boyd is the author of eleven novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Any Human Heart, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; Waiting for Sunrise; and, most recently, Solo: A James Bond Novel. William Boyd lives in London and France. www.williamboyd.co.uk

William Boyd (Author), Susan Lyons (Narrator)

Audiobook

Love Is Blind: A novel

The Whitbread Award-winning author of A Good Man in Africa and the Costa Award-winning Restless now gives us a sweeping new novel that unfolds across fin-de-siècle Europe as it tells a story of ineffable passions--familial, artistic, romantic--and their power to shape, and destroy, a life. Brodie Moncur is a brilliant piano tuner, as brilliant in his own way as John Kilbarron--'The Irish Liszt'--the pianist Brodie accompanies on all of his tours from Paris to Saint Petersburg, as essential to Kilbarron as the pianist's own hands. It is a luxurious life, and a level of success Brodie could hardly have dreamed of growing up in a remote Scottish village, in a household ruled by a tyrannical father. But Brodie would gladly give it all up for the love of the Russian soprano Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive--and consort to Kilbarron. And though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie's passion for her only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous--what Brodie doesn't know about Lika, and about her connection to Kilbarron and his sinister brother, Malachi, eventually testing not only his love for her but his ability, and will, to survive.

William Boyd (Author), Roy Mcmillan (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth written and read by William Boyd. A philandering art dealer tries to give up casual love affairs - seeking only passionate kisses as a substitute. A man recounts his personal history through the things he has stolen from others throughout his life. A couple chart the journey of their five year relationship backwards, from awkward reunion to lovelorn first encounter. And, at the heart of the book, a 24-year old young woman, Bethany Mellmoth, embarks on a year-long journey of wishful and tentative self-discovery. The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth depicts the random encounters that bring the past bubbling to the surface; the impulsive decisions that irrevocably shape a life; and the endless hesitations and loss-of-nerve that wickedly complicate it. These funny, surprising and moving stories are a resounding confirmation of Boyd's powers as one of our most original and compelling storytellers.

William Boyd (Author), William Boyd (Narrator)

Audiobook