Booth cover art

Booth

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Booth

By: Karen Joy Fowler
Narrated by: January LaVoy
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022

Sunday Times Book of the Month

SIX BROTHERS AND SISTERS. ONE INJUSTICE THAT WILL SHATTER THEIR BOND FOREVER

From the million-copy bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family.

Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise—but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history—the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Booth is a riveting novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family.

©2022 Karen Joy Fowler (P)2022 Hachette Audio UK Biographical Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Biography

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Loving Frank cover art
The Trees cover art
Tipperary cover art
The Book of Harlan cover art
The Second Mrs. Hockaday cover art
The Revolution of Marina M. cover art
Pearl cover art
Rogue Herries cover art
In a Field of Blue cover art
Where Wild Peaches Grow cover art
Carnegie's Maid cover art
America's First Daughter cover art
The Sound and the Fury cover art
The Romanov Empress cover art
Mornings on Horseback cover art
Furies cover art

Critic reviews

"In its stretch and imaginative depth, Booth has an utterly seductive authority." (Guardian)
All stars
Most relevant
Fantastic book and wonderfully read. Perfectly juggles the weight of it's historical moments with the humanity of its characters. What could have either been just a list of facts or fantastical guesswork always feels firmly grounded and engaging. 100% recommend.

Loved it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I think I would have benefited from understanding more of the writer’s purpose as she explains in this short note. As I was progressing I spent a lot of time thinking the story was meandering when this is clearly intended by the writer!

Afterword explains much about this book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Had to abandon audio book and will need to purchase a written version as narration is terrible. Every single line is given far too much dramatic emphasis making it difficult to follow this fascinating story. I had hoped that by persevering I would get used to it but it unfortunately it proved just too exhausting to listen to! There has to be light and shade not this grim intensity.

Spoilt by narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
At last, a thoroughly engrossing historical novel. My only gripe is the American pronunciation (in Audiobooks) of ‘Booth’ with a soft ‘th’…..
really irritating. But accurate in terms of American speech, I suppose.

Outstanding

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fowler tackles a formative and highly complex period in American history with a sprawling, spellbinding biography of the Booth family. We are taken at pace but with surprising intimacy through a select series of events in the Booth family history, told from constantly varying perspectives of different family members, while carefully and effectively limiting the focus on John W Booth himself. Fowler finds a compelling and just faintly sinister tone in her writing, which is kept compact and tense by excellent editing. Whilst necessarily fictional in parts, it reads authentically with scattered quotes from Lincoln and others that ground the novel without making it dry. The story builds dramatically towards its well known conclusion, while retaining emphasis on the dynamics and emotional struggles between the Booth family members. The author’s notes rightly raise the continued significance of these 19th century events on present day politics, and American racial politics in particular.
LaVoy narrates with a relentlessness suiting the drama and tempo of the novel, such that this is not an audiobook to listen to with any distractions. Fowler and LaVoy demand your full attention, as almost every sentence is pregnant with significance; and times and perspectives shift so quickly that the preoccupied listener will rapidly find themselves lost. Though I understand if some listeners may find LaVoy’s pressing, theatrical intonation off-putting, I found her to be very clear with excellent characterisation that makes for an immersive, distinctive experience. Highly recommended.

A fascinating, ominous, and important novel

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews