
The Last Lifeboat
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Billie Fulford-Brown
-
By:
-
Hazel Gaynor
About this listen
A Most Anticipated Book by Real Simple ∙ SheReads ∙ BookBub ∙ and more!
Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.
1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.
1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.
When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Cottingley Secret
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Karen Cass, Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her late grandfather's bookshop, she becomes fascinated by the story it tells of two young girls who mystified the world. But it is the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the fairy girls' lives intertwine with hers, connecting past to present and blurring her understanding of what is real and what is imagined. As she begins to understand why a nation once believed in fairies, can Olivia find a way to believe in herself?
-
-
Heartwarming
- By Dana Rampi-Cruz on 10-22-17
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
The Girl Who Came Home
- A Novel of the Titanic
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Connor Kelly-Eiding, Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A voyage across the ocean becomes the odyssey of a lifetime for a young Irish woman…. Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.
-
-
Awesome Book about Titanic.
- By Edythe J Clemons on 02-11-17
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
Only the Beautiful
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, Jorjeana Marie
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
California, 1938—When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret, however—Rosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she’d never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by her loneliness she not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment lets down her guard and ends up pregnant.
-
-
Seeing the world in colors…
- By Bridgeman Family on 03-04-24
By: Susan Meissner
-
When We Were Young & Brave
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Rosie Jones, Imogen Church
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth, and those in her charge. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status.
-
-
heart wrenching And inspiring!!
- By Justin Drogoszewski on 11-22-20
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
The River We Remember
- A Novel
- By: William Kent Krueger
- Narrated by: CJ Wilson
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Memorial Day in Jewel, Minnesota, the body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. The investigation falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife.
-
-
Mediocre!
- By KEK on 09-08-23
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Cottingley Secret
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Karen Cass, Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her late grandfather's bookshop, she becomes fascinated by the story it tells of two young girls who mystified the world. But it is the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the fairy girls' lives intertwine with hers, connecting past to present and blurring her understanding of what is real and what is imagined. As she begins to understand why a nation once believed in fairies, can Olivia find a way to believe in herself?
-
-
Heartwarming
- By Dana Rampi-Cruz on 10-22-17
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
The Girl Who Came Home
- A Novel of the Titanic
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Connor Kelly-Eiding, Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A voyage across the ocean becomes the odyssey of a lifetime for a young Irish woman…. Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.
-
-
Awesome Book about Titanic.
- By Edythe J Clemons on 02-11-17
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
Only the Beautiful
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, Jorjeana Marie
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
California, 1938—When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret, however—Rosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she’d never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by her loneliness she not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment lets down her guard and ends up pregnant.
-
-
Seeing the world in colors…
- By Bridgeman Family on 03-04-24
By: Susan Meissner
-
When We Were Young & Brave
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Rosie Jones, Imogen Church
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth, and those in her charge. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status.
-
-
heart wrenching And inspiring!!
- By Justin Drogoszewski on 11-22-20
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
The River We Remember
- A Novel
- By: William Kent Krueger
- Narrated by: CJ Wilson
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Memorial Day in Jewel, Minnesota, the body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. The investigation falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife.
-
-
Mediocre!
- By KEK on 09-08-23
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Paris Agent
- By: Kelly Rimmer
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden, Fiona Hardingham, Emma Fenney
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Noah Ainsworth is still preoccupied with those perilous, exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in France. A head injury sustained on his final operation has caused frustrating gaps in his memory—in particular about the agent who saved his life during that mission gone wrong, whose real name he never knew, nor whether she even survived the war.
-
-
Powerfully moving story
- By Jennifer Greenfield on 07-28-23
By: Kelly Rimmer
-
The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1838: Northumberland, England. Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands has been Grace Darling’s home for all of her 22 years. When she and her father rescue shipwreck survivors in a furious storm, Grace becomes celebrated throughout England, the subject of poems and plays. 1938: Newport, Rhode Island. Nineteen-years-old and pregnant, Matilda Emmerson has been sent away from Ireland in disgrace. She is to stay with Harriet until her baby is born. As a deadly hurricane approaches, two women, living a century apart, will be linked forever by their instinctive acts of courage and love.
-
-
Amazing woman - amazing book & rendition
- By M. Santos on 04-03-19
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
Three Words for Goodbye
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Heather Webb, Suzanne Toren, Ann Marie Gideon, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish: to travel across Europe - together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say good-bye to those she hasn’t seen since traveling to Europe 40 years earlier. Clara, ever-dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions....
-
-
Listened to the whole thing because I wanted to know how the authors handled the ending
- By Beth♥️Amazon on 08-04-21
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Lovely !
- By RueRue on 02-01-16
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
Meet Me in Monaco
- A Novel of Grace Kelly's Royal Wedding
- By: Hazel Gaynor, Heather Webb
- Narrated by: Nancy Peterson, Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Movie stars and paparazzi flock to Cannes for the glamorous film festival, but Grace Kelly, the biggest star of all, wants only to escape from the flashbulbs. When struggling perfumer Sophie Duval shelters Miss Kelly in her boutique, fending off a persistent British press photographer, James Henderson, a bond is forged between the two women and sets in motion a chain of events that stretches across 30 years of friendship, love, and tragedy.
-
-
Pleasant but predictable
- By RueRue on 02-05-20
By: Hazel Gaynor, and others
-
The Girl from the Savoy
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jones, Lucy Rayner, Paul Fox
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dolly Lane is a dreamer, a downtrodden maid who longs to dance on the London stage, but her life has been fractured by the Great War. Memories of the soldier she loved, of secret shame and profound loss, by turns pull her back and spur her on to make a better life. When she finds employment as a chambermaid at London's grandest hotel, The Savoy, Dolly takes a step closer to the glittering lives of the Bright Young Things who thrive on champagne, jazz, and rebellion.
-
-
WONDERFUL‼️❤️❤️❤️
- By Leslie Gail Mnich on 12-05-19
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
The Paris Daughter
- By: Kristin Harmel
- Narrated by: Madeleine Maby, Kristin Harmel
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, 1939: Young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends the day they meet in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. Though there is a shadow of war creeping across Europe, neither woman suspects that their lives are about to irrevocably change. When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with the most precious thing in her life—her young daughter, playmate to Juliette’s own little girl. But nowhere is safe in war, not even a quiet little bookshop like Juliette’s Librairie des Rêves.
-
-
I hate giving any review but a perfect one but I can’t this time
- By paula wright on 06-17-23
By: Kristin Harmel
-
The Secret Midwife
- By: Soraya M. Lane
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Occupied Poland, 1942: Despite the constant presence of German soldiers in her village, Emilia is allowed certain freedoms as a midwife—the most precious is innocently cycling past Nazi checkpoints to the homes of expectant mothers on her rounds. But Emilia has a secret: for years she’s also been visiting the hidden Jewish mothers and working for the resistance…until she is betrayed.
-
-
Everyone needs to read this.
- By Matt Mole on 10-31-23
By: Soraya M. Lane
-
Homecoming
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Claire Foy
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959. At the end of a scorching hot day, a local deliveryman makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia. Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. Until a phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney.
-
-
Loved the compelling audiobook version!
- By Melissas Bookshelf on 04-07-23
By: Kate Morton
-
The Spectacular
- A Novel
- By: Fiona Davis
- Narrated by: Rachel L. Jacobs, Kimberly Farr
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion Brooks knows she should be happy. Her high school sweetheart is about to propose and sweep her off to the life everyone has always expected they’d have together: a quiet house in the suburbs, Marion staying home to raise their future children. But instead, Marion finds herself feeling trapped. So when she comes across an opportunity to audition for the famous Radio City Rockettes—the glamorous precision-dancing troupe—she jumps at the chance to exchange her predictable future for the dazzling life of a performer.
-
-
Great story- strange narration
- By SL on 08-20-23
By: Fiona Davis
-
Sisters Under the Rising Sun
- A Novel
- By: Heather Morris
- Narrated by: Laura Carmichael
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the midst of World War II, an English musician, Norah Chambers, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific. Norah remains to care for her husband and elderly parents, knowing she may never see her child again. Sister Nesta James, a Welsh Australian nurse, has enlisted to tend to Allied troops. But as Singapore falls to the Japanese she joins the terrified cargo of people, including the heartbroken Norah, crammed aboard the Vyner Brooke merchant ship.
-
-
Beautiful story
- By Kindle Customer on 03-11-24
By: Heather Morris
-
The Glovemaker's Daughter
- By: Shari J. Ryan
- Narrated by: Henry Nott, Hannah Genesius
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, 1943. German soldiers drag me out onto the cobbled street and push me toward the waiting truck. I force myself to face forward as tears stream down my cheeks. If I look back, they’ll know. I can’t let them find my baby girl....
-
-
Not your typical WWII story
- By Amazon Customer on 08-04-24
By: Shari J. Ryan
Critic reviews
“Hazel Gaynor's novels have a way of gripping a reader's heartstrings, and her latest, The Last Lifeboat, is no exception. Inspired by the 1940 sinking of the SS City of Benares, The Last Lifeboat imagines what might have happened in a lifeboat lost at sea and the child evacuees onboard. Gaynor's latest is a glimpse into the anguish amid the families impacted by mass evacuations during WWII, but more than this, it is a story of bravery and surrendering to hope—especially for two women facing the most unimaginable of circumstances. A poignant, stirring tale. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time to come.” —Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary
“In The Last Lifeboat, beloved historical fiction author Hazel Gaynor illuminates a little known incident from the Second World War: the sinking by German U-boat of a ship carrying children who were being evacuated from Britain. The book tells the harrowing story from the alternating perspectives of Lily, a mother in England faced with the excruciating dilemma of whether to send her children away, and Alice, who escorts the evacuee children and finds herself charged with helping a small group of them survive in a lifeboat for eight days after the ship sinks. With her trademark combination of meticulous research and gifted storytelling, Gaynor weaves a tale that is captivating, heartbreaking and unforgettable. —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of Code Name Sapphire
"A searing, emotional, based-on-a-true-story tale of impossible survival and incredible hope aboard a single lifeboat adrift in a greedy, perilous sea. … Gaynor’s story is powerful not just in its closely researched adherence to astonishing historical truth, but also in the way she so richly imagines the emotions of both those aboard the doomed ship and those on land who made the wrenching decision to part with their children. You’ll be on the edge of your seat as you root for a mother who’s lost nearly everything, a courageous children’s guardian finding her inner strength, and a ragtag group of survivors alone in the storm-tossed Atlantic.”
—Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names
There was a lot of sadness and despair in this story, but it is offset by an equal amount of hope and joy. The emotions of the mothers in this book are so deep…you can FEEL their profound sadness and their deep feelings of hope.
The perseverance and the will to live of the people in the lifeboat is astounding. How they endured, how they found moments of joy and hope, how they found moments of beauty in their surrounding and an ability to appreciate them in the midst of what they were enduring just astounds me.
There was not a moment in this book in which my attention strayed or in which I felt bored. I didn’t want this book to end. I know this book was JUST released, but I hope Ms. Gaynor is already hard at work on her next novel.
Don’t miss this book — it’s one of the best credits I’ve ever spent.
A WONDERFUL STORY OF PERSEVERANCE
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Powerful, Educational, and Evoking
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Realistic, sad, suspenseful
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Another main setting is within Great Britian itself. We learn what it was like in London during the blitzkrieg attacks. Experiences of the children's mothers, Aunts, and close family and friends.
--I had a hard time setting this book down...so if you read before bed, expect to stay up late. it's that good!
I have loved all the books by Hazel Gaynor that I have read.
Must Read!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The bravery of these young people and the devastation to their parents
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Amazing True Story of Human Resiliency
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Highly recommend this book. No sex, no foul language that I recall, just a really good book that keeps you wanting to listen.
One of my biggest fears would be stranded at sea
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The historic basis
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.