
Shy Creatures
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Lucy Scott
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By:
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Clare Chambers
About this listen
"A beautiful story of unfolding secrets and unforeseen consequences, filled with moments that are somehow restrained and astute and gorgeously written all at the same time."
—Holly Gramazio, bestselling author of The Husbands
An alluring literary mystery full of secrets and lies, when an art teacher at a psychiatric hospital in 1960s England finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of a mysterious patient who has spent decades living in complete isolation with his elderly aunts in a decrepit Victorian house. Perfect for fans of Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver, and Tessa Hadley.
In all failed relationships there is a tipping point. It goes unnoticed at the time but can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park…
The London suburb of Croydon, 1964: Helen Hansford is unmarried and in her thirties. Something of a disappointment to her middle-class parents, she’s an art therapist at the Westbury Park psychiatric hospital, where she has been having a rebellious love affair with her colleague Gil, a dashing but married doctor.
One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance at a derelict, vine-covered Victorian house a few miles up the road. There the police find a mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, his hair and beard down to his waist. It appears he lives in the old house with his elderly, frail aunt, who expires as soon as she’s admitted to the hospital. No one knows why William has been shut away for decades, unseen by neighbors, with only his two now-deceased aunts for company. Westbury Park becomes his refuge.
When it emerges that William is not only sane but a talented artist, Helen comes to see him as something of a personal project. But as she tries to solve the puzzle of the Hidden Man’s past, Helen’s own carefully constructed life of secrets begins to unravel...
A gorgeously written and life-affirming novel about life’s delicate layers of experience and connection, Shy Creatures reveals all the different ways we can be confined...and liberated.
©2024 Clare Chambers (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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“𝘎𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘥𝘰𝘨𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘥𝘰𝘨𝘴 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮.”
- By A.B. | @kindaspooky_reads on 11-15-24
By: Marie Tierney
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The Story of the Forest
- By: Linda Grant
- Narrated by: Anna Cordell
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 1913 when Mina, the young and carefree daughter of a Jewish merchant, roams into a forest on the edge of the Baltic Sea looking for mushrooms. Instead, she encounters a gang of unruly, charismatic Bolsheviks—an adventure that will become the stuff of familial lore for generations to come. Intending to save her from further corruption, and in an act that forever changes the trajectory of their family’s life, Mina and her eldest brother, Jossel, board a ship to England.
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Beautiful story connecting to Jewish History.
- By kathy lipchutz on 11-17-24
By: Linda Grant
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Pearly Everlasting
- A Novel
- By: Tammy Armstrong
- Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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New Brunswick, 1934. When a cook in a logging camp finds an orphaned baby bear, he brings it home to his wife, who names the cub Bruno and raises him alongside her newborn daughter, Pearly. Growing up, Pearly and Bruno share a special bond and become inseparable. While life in the camp can be perilous—loggers are regularly injured or even killed—the Everlasting family form a close-knit community with the woodsmen, who accept and embrace the tame young bear.
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Dedication to family
- By smiley on 04-12-25
By: Tammy Armstrong
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The First Phone Call from Heaven
- A Novel
- By: Mitch Albom
- Narrated by: Mitch Albom
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The First Phone Call from Heaven tells the story of a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife. Is it the greatest miracle ever or a massive hoax? Sully Harding, a grief-stricken single father, is determined to find out. An allegory about the power of belief - and a page-turner that will touch your soul - Albom's masterful storytelling has never been so moving and unexpected.
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Heaven Calling...............
- By tooonce72 on 11-20-13
By: Mitch Albom
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A Letter to the Luminous Deep
- By: Sylvie Cathrall
- Narrated by: Claire Morgan, Joshua Riley, Justin Avoth, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other. Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.'s home, and she and Henerey vanish.
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Heavy handed and boring
- By Carson on 05-23-24
By: Sylvie Cathrall
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The Magnificent Ruins
- By: Nayantara Roy
- Narrated by: Deepa Samuel
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Lila De is on the verge of a career breakthrough when she gets a call from her mother in Kolkata, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate–so she returns home after a decade with no contact. Her extended family isn’t so easy to win over, and to make matters worse, Lila is caught between her old boyfriend and her occasional lover–her star author–who suddenly wants to define the relationship. As Lila come to terms with both past and present, suppressed family secrets emerge, culminating in a shocking act of violence. Lila has no choice but to finally address her family.
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great story
- By Lori Kaplan on 01-26-25
By: Nayantara Roy
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The Blue Hour
- A Novel
- By: Paula Hawkins
- Narrated by: Gemma Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day. Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago. Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation. But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling. And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge....
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Another overhyped dismal book
- By Avid series reader on 11-01-24
By: Paula Hawkins
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Eleanore of Avignon
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth DeLozier
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Provence, 1347. Eleanore (Elea) Blanchet is a young midwife and herbalist with remarkable skills. But as she learned the day her mother died, the most dangerous thing a woman can do is draw attention to herself. She attends patients in her home city of Avignon, spends time with her father and twin sister, gathers herbs in the surrounding woods, and dreams of the freedom to pursue her calling without fear.
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Beautifully woven together without being overly-flowery.
- By Allison on 03-26-25
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The Paris Widow
- By: Kimberly Belle
- Narrated by: Marni Penning, Patrick Zeller
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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When Stella met Adam, she thought she had finally found a nice, normal guy—a welcome change from her previous boyfriend and her precarious jetsetter lifestyle with him. But her secure world comes crashing down when Adam goes missing after an explosion in the city square. Unable to reach him, she panics. As the French police investigate, it’s revealed that Adam was on their radar as a dealer of rare and stolen antiquities with a long roster of criminal clients. Reeling from this news, Stella is determined not to leave Paris until she has the full story.
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Narration was too much
- By Chelse on 06-30-24
By: Kimberly Belle
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Welcome to Glorious Tuga
- A Novel
- By: Francesca Segal
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Passionate about conservation and fleeing an argument with her mother, newly qualified London vet Charlotte Walker has taken up a fellowship on the tiny South Atlantic island of Tuga de Oro to study the endangered gold coin tortoises in the jungle interior. She can claim the best of reasons for this year in paradise—What better motivation than to save a species?—but the reality is more complex. For Charlotte has secretly come to believe that she has her own connection to this remote and eccentric community, and she is finally determined to solve the mystery that has dominated her life.
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Cozy story set on tiny pacific island
- By Lee on 08-23-24
By: Francesca Segal
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Still Life with Bread Crumbs
- A Novel
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life.
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A Gentrified Harlequin
- By Michele Kellett on 03-24-14
By: Anna Quindlen
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The Alternatives
- A Novel
- By: Caoilinn Hughes
- Narrated by: Sarah Bolger, Aisling Franciosi, Caoilinn Hughes, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties—all single, all with PhDs—they are each attempting to do meaningful work in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disparate, distanced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London’s Notting Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth’s future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home.
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Great character development.
- By CJW on 04-24-24
By: Caoilinn Hughes
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Private Rites
- A Novel
- By: Julia Armfield
- Narrated by: Hannah van der Westhuysen
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and old rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father, an architect as cruel as he was revered, dies. His death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.
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Beautifully Written, But Mainly Fluff and Filler
- By Megs on 02-26-25
By: Julia Armfield
Touching
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Interesting storyline idea
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Very good story
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skilled writing/ excellent narration
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Narrator seems to be almost mocking the characters
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