
The Last Garden in England
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By:
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Julia Kelly
About this listen
From the author of the international best sellers The Light Over London and The Whispers of War comes “a compelling read, filled with lovable characters and an alluring twist of fates” (Ellen Keith, author of The Dutch Wife) about five women living across three different times whose lives are all connected by one very special garden.
Present day: Emma Lovett, who has dedicated her career to breathing new life into long-neglected gardens, has just been given the opportunity of a lifetime: to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House estate, designed in 1907 by her hero Venetia Smith. But as Emma dives deeper into the gardens’ past, she begins to uncover secrets that have long lain hidden.
1907: A talented artist with a growing reputation for her work, Venetia Smith has carved out a niche for herself as a garden designer to industrialists, solicitors, and bankers looking to show off their wealth with sumptuous country houses. When she is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph, but the gardens - and the people she meets - promise to change her life forever.
1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton, on the other hand, is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds, the mistress of the grand house, is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life now that her home has been requisitioned and transformed into a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers. But when war threatens Highbury House’s treasured gardens, these three very different women are drawn together by a secret that will last for decades.
“Gorgeously written and rooted in meticulous period detail, this novel is vibrant as it is stirring. Fans of historical fiction will fall in love with The Last Garden in England.” (Roxanne Veletzos, author of The Girl They Left Behind).
©2021 Julia Kelly. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Isabelle Shelton has always found comfort in the predictable world of her mother’s dressmaking shop, Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, while her sister Sylvia turned her back on the family years ago to marry a wealthy doctor whom Izzie detests. When their mother dies unexpectedly, the sisters are stunned to find they’ve jointly inherited the family business. Izzie is determined to buy Sylvia out, but when she’s conscripted into the WAAF, she’s forced to seek Sylvia’s help to keep the shop open.
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Excellent WW2 historical fiction!
- By Mrs. York✨✏️ on 04-01-25
By: Julia Kelly
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A Traitor in Whitehall
- A Mystery
- By: Julia Kelly
- Narrated by: Marisa Calin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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1940, England: Evelyne Redfern, known as “The Parisian Orphan” as a child, is working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne on a night out, Evelyne finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at work is murdered, and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise to find the killer.
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Okay, but needed help
- By Olivia Street on 11-20-24
By: Julia Kelly
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The Botanist’s Daughter
- By: Kayte Nunn
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Victorian England, headstrong adventuress Elizabeth takes up her late father's quest for a rare, miraculous plant. She faces a perilous sea voyage, unforeseen dangers and treachery that threatens her entire family. In present-day Australia, Anna finds a mysterious metal box containing a sketchbook of dazzling watercolours, a photograph inscribed 'Spring 1886' and a small bag of seeds. It sets her on a path far from her safe, carefully ordered life and on a journey that will force her to face her own demons.
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Caroline Lee is superb! But the story not so much
- By Maria on 08-22-18
By: Kayte Nunn
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Earthly Joys
- Tradescant Novels, Book 1
- By: Philippa Gregory
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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John Tradescant’s fame and skill as a gardener are unsurpassed in 17th-century England, but it is his clear-sighted honesty and loyalty that make him an invaluable servant. As an informal confidant of Sir Robert Cecil, adviser to King James I, he witnesses the making of history, from the Gunpowder Plot to the accession of King Charles I and the growing animosity between Parliament and court.
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Sinful man
- By Andy on 10-18-18
By: Philippa Gregory
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All the Pretty Places
- A Novel of the Gilded Age
- By: Joy Callaway
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Rye, New York, 1893. Sadie Fremd’s dreams hinge on her family’s nursery, which has been the supplier of choice for respected landscape architects on the East Coast for decades. Now her small town is in a panic as the economy plummets into a depression, and Sadie’s father is pressuring her to secure her future by marrying a wealthy man among her peerage—but Sadie has never been one to play it safe. Besides, her heart is already spoken for.
By: Joy Callaway
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The Victory Garden
- By: Rhys Bowen
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong 21-year-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage. When he is sent back to the front, Emily volunteers as a “land girl,” tending to the neglected grounds of a large Devonshire estate. It’s here that Emily discovers the long-forgotten journals of a medicine woman who devoted her life to her herbal garden.
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Ridiculously bad
- By mary on 03-23-19
By: Rhys Bowen
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The Forbidden Garden
- A Novel
- By: Ellen Herrick
- Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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At the nursery she runs with her sisters on the New England coast, Sorrel Sparrow has honed her rare gift for nurturing plants and flowers. Now that reputation, and a stroke of good timing, lands Sorrel an unexpected opportunity: reviving a long-dormant Shakespearean garden on an English country estate. Arriving at Kirkwood Hall, ancestral home of Sir Graham Kirkwood and his wife, Stella, Sorrel is shocked by the desolate state of the walled garden. Generations have tried - and failed - to bring it back to glory.
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im not a Fabio fan.... too much blah blah blah...
- By Jamie on 10-21-19
By: Ellen Herrick
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The Orchardist
- By: Amanda Coplin
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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At the turn of the 20th century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit from the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion.
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"Somebody tell a joke!"
- By Deborah on 10-29-12
By: Amanda Coplin
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The Heirloom Garden
- By: Viola Shipman
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara, Lauren Ezzo
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built a new family…of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive.
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Audible vs Hard Copy
- By Julie Shurley on 04-02-21
By: Viola Shipman
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The Seed Keeper
- A Novel
- By: Diane Wilson
- Narrated by: Kyla García
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn't return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato - where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they've inherited.
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Heartbreaking American History.
- By Regina on 03-12-22
By: Diane Wilson
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Somewhere in France
- A Novel of the Great War
- By: Jennifer Robson
- Narrated by: Alison Larkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Lady Elizabeth Neville-Ashford wants to travel the world, pursue a career, and marry for love. But in 1914, the stifling restrictions of aristocratic British society and her mother’s rigid expectations forbid Lilly from following her heart. When war breaks out, the spirited young woman seizes her chance for independence. Defying her parents, she moves to London and eventually becomes an ambulance driver in the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps - an exciting and treacherous job that takes her close to the Western Front.
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Somewhere in France
- By Nicole H Henstrom on 04-16-23
By: Jennifer Robson
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Miss Morgan's Book Brigade
- A Novel
- By: Janet Skeslien Charles
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Sarah Gadon, Jackie Sanders, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild destroyed French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen—children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.
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This is what defines great historical fiction
- By Hall Ways on 08-11-24
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The Forest
- By: Edward Rutherfurd
- Narrated by: Lynn Redgrave
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Abridged
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From the time of the Norman Conquest to the present day, the New Forest, along England’s southern coast, has remained an almost mythical place. It is here that Saxon and Norman kings rode forth with their hunting parties, and where William the Conqueror’s son Rufus was mysteriously killed. The mighty oaks of the forest were used to build the ships for Admiral Nelson’s navy, and the fishermen who lived in Christchurch and Lymington helped Sir Francis Drake fight off the Spanish Armada.
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Beware, Abridged. Just a "Readers Digest" version.
- By Bob on 07-18-14
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A Memory of Violets
- A Novel of London's Flower Sellers
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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1876. Among the filth and depravity of Covent Garden's flower markets, orphaned Irish sisters Flora and Rosie Flynn sell posies of violets and watercress to survive. It is a pitiful existence, made bearable only by each other's presence. When they become separated, the decision of a desperate woman sets their lives on very different paths.
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Lovely !
- By RueRue on 02-01-16
By: Hazel Gaynor
Good Development of Plot and Charecters
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Best book I have read this year and for many years
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Beautiful Story!
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Interesting Historical Fiction Novel
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Loved this story!
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This was a lot like Lights Over London I read by the same author - but, I like the setting (England in 1904, WWII, and current day). It’s female focused and the history is accurate. Good when I don’t have anything else to read.
I don’t like that all of the people are white and the relationships are heterosexual. I might write to the author and ask her to consider some diversity.
Good read, lacks diversity
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Strong Women
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Very interesting I wish More was true
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Many stories woven together
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GREAT BOOK
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