
The Road to Tender Hearts
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Mark Bramhall
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By:
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Annie Hartnett
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A darkly comic and warm-hearted novel about an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush—bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death—by the beloved author of Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals
“A miraculous novel—an actual and spiritual road trip you won’t forget.”—John Irving
At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already.
But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.
Before PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also thinks he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter who's adrift in her twenties, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.
This could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for—a fresh shot at love and parenting—but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.
©2025 Annie Hartnett (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A long-suffering family finds joy. A clairvoyant cat has premonitions of death and other supernatural talents. Vultures are hoping two orphaned children will stay alive. A dead daughter’s hat talks to her father. A miraculous novel—an actual and spiritual road trip you won’t forget.”—John Irving
“A feel-good, feel-sad, warm, dark, and funny road-trip story, in the grand tradition of Little Miss Sunshine . . . I fell in love with the characters individually but also as one big, messy family, which is what this tenderhearted book is all about.”—Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich
“The Road to Tender Hearts is a brilliant and poignant journey of family, forgiveness, and rediscovery. This road trip has it all—a cast of quirky characters, unhealed family wounds, attempts to rekindle lost connections, even a cat that can sense death, but most of all, it’s great fun! Hartnett, like always, has drawn such complex, endearing, and hilarious characters, you’ll root for them to the very end. This novel will leave you thinking about your own journeys—both the ones taken and the ones still ahead. It’s a moving, unforgettable story about the power we have to change our lives.”—Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding People
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Stunning!
- By Jennifer on 05-17-25
By: Kevin Wilson
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The Other Side of Now
- A Novel
- By: Paige Harbison
- Narrated by: Paige Harbison
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a tiny nervous breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip to Ireland. Specifically, to the village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving. When Meg arrives, the people in town don’t just recognize her, they seem to know her. She quickly—reluctantly—realizes she has somehow slipped into an alternate reality.
By: Paige Harbison
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Slanting Towards the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Lidija Hilje
- Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Ivona divorced the love of her life, Vlaho, a decade ago. They met as students at the turn of the millennium, when newly democratic Croatia was alive with hope and promise. But the challenges of living in a burgeoning country extinguished Ivona’s dreams one after another—and a devastating secret forced her to set him free. Now Vlaho is remarried and a proud father of two, while Ivona’s life has taken a downward turn. In her thirties, she has returned to her childhood home to care for her ailing father.
By: Lidija Hilje
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Bug Hollow
- A Novel
- By: Michelle Huneven
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When Sally Samuelson was eight years old, her golden boy brother Ellis went missing the summer he graduated high school. Ellis finally turned up at the bucolic Bug Hollow, a last gasp of the beautiful Northern California counterculture in the seventies. He had found joy in the communal life there, but died in a freak accident weeks later. From that point, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis, especially after Julia, Ellis’s girlfriend from Bug Hollow, shows up pregnant on their doorstep.
By: Michelle Huneven
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The Phoenix Pencil Company
- A Novel
- By: Allison King
- Narrated by: Carolyn Kang, Jodi Long, Sura Siu, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly—especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade.
By: Allison King
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What Kind of Paradise
- A Novel
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Helen Laser
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.
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Wow
- By Lacey Murillo on 06-09-25
By: Janelle Brown
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The Poppy Fields
- A Novel
- By: Nikki Erlick
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Dan Bittner, Stacey Glemboski, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal. Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain...and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects. On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog.
By: Nikki Erlick
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These Heathens
- A Novel
- By: Mia McKenzie
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town’s midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia’s orbit.
By: Mia McKenzie
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Home of the American Circus
- By: Allison Larkin
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames—as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart.
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Julia Whelan makes this story feel like my best friend is talking to me.
- By Samantha on 05-23-25
By: Allison Larkin
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The Names
- A Novel
- By: Florence Knapp
- Narrated by: Dervla Kirwan
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...
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Most depressing
- By Fudd on 06-09-25
By: Florence Knapp
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Speak to Me of Home
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. I
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I enjoyed the story. It was good but slower paced and not as wonderful as American Dirt.
- By Julie Krow on 06-06-25
By: Jeanine Cummins
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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Guerrieri
- Narrated by: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Jessica Guerrieri
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Leah O'Connor is torn between the life she's currently living and the allure of a phantom life that can no longer be hers. Swept off her feet by the gentle charm of Lucas O'Connor, Leah's unexpected pregnancy changes the course of her carefree and nomadic existence. Over a decade and three children later, Leah is unraveling. She resents the world in which her artistic aspirations have been sidelined by the overwhelming demands of motherhood, and the ever-present rift between herself and her mother-in-law, Christine, is best dulled by increasingly fuller glasses of wine.
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Captivating from the beginning 🤍
- By Anais on 05-13-25
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Bitter Sweet
- A Novel
- By: Hattie Williams
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Charlie is twenty-three, single and the new publicity assistant at London’s preeminent independent book publishing house. Richard Aveling is fifty-six, married and the author who has defined his generation. Charlie has long idolized the charming, illustrious writer, who also represents a link to her late mother who loved his work. But as they embark on an illicit and all-consuming affair, Charlie is forced to hide the relationship from everyone she cares about.
By: Hattie Williams
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Flashlight
- A Novel
- By: Susan Choi
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past.
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I want my 15 hours back
- By Amazon customer on 06-11-25
By: Susan Choi
quirky lovable dysfunctional family tales
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Heartwarming
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Brilliant!
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Full of life❤️❤️
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Heartfelt and heart warming
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Don't miss out
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Great story
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Unexpected
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Sweet story
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The complexity of relationships and families.
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