Listen free for 30 days
-
Signs for Lost Children
- Narrated by: Merield Scholfield
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction
People who bought this also bought...
-
Summerwater
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Morven Christie
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the longest day of the summer, 12 people sit cooped up with their families in a faded Scottish cabin park. The endless rain leaves them with little to do but watch the other residents. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a retired couple reminisces about neighbours long since moved on; a teenage boy braves the dark waters of the loch in his red kayak. Each person is wrapped in their own cares but increasingly alert to the makeshift community around them.
-
-
Thoughts for our fractured times - brilliant
- By Rachel Redford on 29-08-20
-
Bodies of Light
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Meriel Scholfield
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ally is intelligent, studious and engaged in an eternal battle to gain her mother’s approval and affection. Her mother is a religious zealot, keener on feeding the poor and saving prostitutes than on embracing the challenges of motherhood. Even when Ally is accepted as one of the first female students to read medicine in London, it still doesn’t seem good enough. The first in a two-book sequence, Bodies of Light is a poignant tale of a psychologically tumultuous 19th-century upbringing set in the world of Pre-Raphaelitism.
-
-
The early days of female doctors.
- By DubaiReader on 20-11-16
-
The Tidal Zone
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Toby Longworth
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poignant, funny and engrossing exploration of family life centred around a cataclysmic event and its aftermath, from the author of Night Waking and Signs for Lost Children. Adam is a stay-at-home dad who is also working on a history of the bombing and rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. He is a good man, and he is happy. But one day he receives a call from his daughter's school to inform him that for no apparent reason, 15-year-old Miriam has collapsed and stopped breathing.
-
-
Not one word misplaced or wasted.
- By A. E. Wright on 13-07-16
-
Ghost Wall
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Christine Hewitt
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the 'primitive minds' of our ancestors. Teenage Silvie is living in a remote Northumberland camp as an exercise in experimental archaeology. Her father is an abusive man, obsessed with recreating the discomfort, brutality and harshness of Iron Age life. Behind and ahead of Silvie's narrative is the story of a bog girl, a sacrifice, a woman killed by those closest to her, and as the hot summer builds to a terrifying climax, Silvie and the Bog girl are in ever more terrifying proximity.
-
-
Could not put this one down!
- By Manda N on 10-11-18
-
Night Waking
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Jane Lambert
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Historian Anna Bennett has a book to write. She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently-absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton in the garden of their house.
-
-
Struggled to keep me awake
- By R. J. Gladden on 12-04-14
-
Small Pleasures
- By: Clare Chambers
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and - on the brink of 40 - living a limited existence with her truculent mother: a small life from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys.
-
-
Poignant, thoughtful & beautifully crafted
- By Rachel Redford on 26-07-20
-
Summerwater
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Morven Christie
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the longest day of the summer, 12 people sit cooped up with their families in a faded Scottish cabin park. The endless rain leaves them with little to do but watch the other residents. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a retired couple reminisces about neighbours long since moved on; a teenage boy braves the dark waters of the loch in his red kayak. Each person is wrapped in their own cares but increasingly alert to the makeshift community around them.
-
-
Thoughts for our fractured times - brilliant
- By Rachel Redford on 29-08-20
-
Bodies of Light
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Meriel Scholfield
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ally is intelligent, studious and engaged in an eternal battle to gain her mother’s approval and affection. Her mother is a religious zealot, keener on feeding the poor and saving prostitutes than on embracing the challenges of motherhood. Even when Ally is accepted as one of the first female students to read medicine in London, it still doesn’t seem good enough. The first in a two-book sequence, Bodies of Light is a poignant tale of a psychologically tumultuous 19th-century upbringing set in the world of Pre-Raphaelitism.
-
-
The early days of female doctors.
- By DubaiReader on 20-11-16
-
The Tidal Zone
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Toby Longworth
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poignant, funny and engrossing exploration of family life centred around a cataclysmic event and its aftermath, from the author of Night Waking and Signs for Lost Children. Adam is a stay-at-home dad who is also working on a history of the bombing and rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. He is a good man, and he is happy. But one day he receives a call from his daughter's school to inform him that for no apparent reason, 15-year-old Miriam has collapsed and stopped breathing.
-
-
Not one word misplaced or wasted.
- By A. E. Wright on 13-07-16
-
Ghost Wall
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Christine Hewitt
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the 'primitive minds' of our ancestors. Teenage Silvie is living in a remote Northumberland camp as an exercise in experimental archaeology. Her father is an abusive man, obsessed with recreating the discomfort, brutality and harshness of Iron Age life. Behind and ahead of Silvie's narrative is the story of a bog girl, a sacrifice, a woman killed by those closest to her, and as the hot summer builds to a terrifying climax, Silvie and the Bog girl are in ever more terrifying proximity.
-
-
Could not put this one down!
- By Manda N on 10-11-18
-
Night Waking
- By: Sarah Moss
- Narrated by: Jane Lambert
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Historian Anna Bennett has a book to write. She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently-absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton in the garden of their house.
-
-
Struggled to keep me awake
- By R. J. Gladden on 12-04-14
-
Small Pleasures
- By: Clare Chambers
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and - on the brink of 40 - living a limited existence with her truculent mother: a small life from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys.
-
-
Poignant, thoughtful & beautifully crafted
- By Rachel Redford on 26-07-20
-
The Searcher
- By: Tana French
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a remote Irish village would be the perfect escape. After 25 years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But then a local kid comes looking for his help. His brother has gone missing and no one, least of all the police, seems to care. Cal wants nothing to do with any kind of investigation, but somehow he can't make himself walk away.
-
-
Sorry, only three stars from me
- By Chris Lofts on 24-12-20
-
Trio
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Hannah Arterton
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A producer. A novelist. An actress. It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. While the world is reeling, our trio is involved in making a rackety Swingin' '60s British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. As the film is shot, with its usual drastic ups and downs, so does our trio's private, secret world begin to take over their public one. Pressures build inexorably - someone's going to crack. Or maybe they all will.
-
-
Not a bad story. Abysmally read
- By S on 29-10-20
-
Miss Benson's Beetle
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1950. In a devastating moment of clarity, Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job and advertises for an assistant to accompany her on an expedition. She is going to travel to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid Pretty, in her unlikely pink travel suit, is not the companion Margery had in mind. And yet together they will be drawn into an adventure that will exceed every expectation. They will risk everything, break all the rules and, at the top of a red mountain, discover their best selves.
-
-
Finding the way
- By Rachel Redford on 21-08-20
-
Burnt Sugar
- By: Avni Doshi
- Narrated by: Vineeta Rishi
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her loveless marriage to join an ashram, endured a brief stint as a beggar (mostly to spite her affluent parents) and spent years chasing after a dishevelled, homeless 'artist' - all with her young child in tow. Now she is forgetting things, mixing up her maid's wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a woman who never cared for her.
-
-
I didn't enjoy it
- By TheRealMrsB on 16-09-20
-
The Pull of the Stars
- By: Emma Donoghue
- Narrated by: Emma Lowe
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with an unfamiliar flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Amazon Customer on 24-07-20
-
Away with the Penguins
- By: Hazel Prior
- Narrated by: Ayoola Smart, Nigel Pilkington, Nicolette McKenzie
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Veronica McCreedy lives in a mansion by the sea. She loves a nice cup of Darjeeling tea whilst watching a good wildlife documentary. And she’s never seen without her ruby-red lipstick. Although these days, Veronica is rarely seen by anyone, because at 85, her days are spent mostly at home, alone. She can be found either collecting litter from the beach, trying to locate her glasses, or shouting instructions to her assistant, Eileen. But today...today, Veronica is going to make a decision that will change all of this.
-
-
Beautiful!
- By Countrydweller on 16-08-20
-
Hamnet
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Daisy Donovan
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.
-
-
Narrator fights writing and wins (sadly)
- By Leaf Green on 20-07-20
-
Leave the World Behind
- By: Rumaan Alam
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a holiday: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and - with nowhere else to turn - they have come to the country in search of shelter.
-
-
best book ever!!
- By Amazon Customer on 16-12-20
-
Strange Flowers
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Donna Anita Nikolaisen
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1973, Moll Gladney goes missing from the Tipperary hillside where she was born. Slowly, her parents - Paddy and Kit - begin to accept that she’s gone forever. But she returns, changed, and with a few surprises for her family and neighbours. Nothing is ever the same again for the Gladneys, who learn that fate cares little for duty, that life rarely conforms to expectation, that God can’t be relied upon to heed any prayer. A story of exile and return, of loss and discovery, of retreat from grief and the saving power of love.
-
-
Wonderful
- By ncp on 27-09-20
-
Shuggie Bain
- By: Douglas Stuart
- Narrated by: Angus King
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.
-
-
Wonderful read
- By Moodyminx on 13-05-20
-
Just Like You
- By: Nick Hornby
- Narrated by: Ben Bailey Smith, Hattie Ladbury
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The person you are with is just like you: same background, same age, same interests. The perfect match. And it is an unmitigated disaster. Then, when and where you least expect it, you meet someone new. You seem to have nothing in common and yet, somehow, it feels totally right. Nick Hornby's brilliantly observed, tender but also brutally funny new novel gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person - someone who is not just like you at all.
-
-
TV drama-ready!
- By Rachel Redford on 23-09-20
-
Sisters
- By: Daisy Johnson
- Narrated by: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anna Koval
- Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a serious case of school bullying becomes too much to bear, sisters July and September move across the country with their mother to a long-abandoned family home. In their new and unsettling surroundings, July finds that the deep bond she has always had with September - a closeness that not even their mother is allowed to penetrate - is starting to change in ways she cannot entirely understand. Inside the house the tension among the three women builds, while outside the sisters meet a boy who tests the limits of their shared experiences.
-
-
Sisters
- By Ms N Murphy on 27-10-20
Summary
Only weeks into their marriage, a young couple embark on a six-month period of separation. Tom Cavendish goes to Japan to build lighthouses, and his wife, Ally, a doctor, begins her work at the Truro asylum. As the couple navigate their separate professional trials, the foundations of their marriage begin to slip.
An exquisite novel of the 1880s told in alternating parts: two maps of absence - two distinct but conjoined portraits of loneliness and determination.
Critic reviews
More from the same
Author
What listeners say about Signs for Lost Children
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rachel Redford
- 15-08-16
Exploration of doors and chambers of heart & mind
Signs of Lost Children follows on from Moss's Bodies of Light, but is also stand-alone. It's an immensely sophisticated, interesting and different novel. It's such an intelligent and earnest work that it seems mean not to give it straight 5s, but it does have some imperfections.
Set in the 1880s, Ally and Tom are separated by their work just weeks after their marriage. Tom travels to Japan to build lighthouses and Ally, a qualified doctor, begins work at Truro asylum. Immediately we know this is no ordinary nineteenth century couple, and this is no ordinary novel! The main body of the story is taken up alternating between Tom in Japan and Ally in England, but I found the best part was very much towards the end when they come together again after 6 months and their apartness is almost impossible to bridge. The very end is the only glimmer of what you might expect from a nineteenth century novel...
Moss is a beautiful writer, as sensitive and delicate when describing the filigree of leaves in a Japanese garden, the fineness of Japanese embroideries; the indignities of female inmates of the madhouse, the wildness of the Cornish coast, and most of all, the intricacies of the heart and mind. The whole is sympathetically and pleasantly narrated with sensible pauses between the Japanese and English sections which give you just the required moment to make the adjustment.
The elements which made me slightly disappointed overall was the way that Tom's very interesting experiences with the Japanese culture and his lighthouse work was shadowy in comparison with the detail in Ally's life, as the indelible corrosive effects of her mother's harsh morality and carping cause her to suffer a breakdown and she struggles to find acceptance as a doctor working amongst insane women. The whole work is massively and scrupulously researched and a whole raft of issues and their ramifications - from mental instability to the legacy of childhood on adulthood and the struggle for identity - are explored. This is always interesting but sometimes the intellectual freight becomes too heavy as ideas become stronger than the characters.
Moss's novels are gathering critical acclaim fast and I will certainly download her newest novel The Tidal Zone.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- L. H. Healy
- 10-08-19
One of the best books I’ve ever read
Absolutely brilliant book, wonderfully told by Sarah Moss and beautifully read by Merield Scholfield. I think Ally is one of my favourite ever characters in literature.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- a white
- 19-09-17
Beautiful
I read ( listened) to this after Bodies of ligh and loved the continuation of the characters. I feel sad that I can't know anymore about Ally et al. Wonderful narration too. Thanks!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Celticprincess
- 29-11-16
Great sequel to a great book
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I love the depth of the characters and their personal journeys. Ally continues to make her way in the world as one of the first female doctors in the UK and focusing on an underdeveloped aspect of medical science: the treatment of psychiatric patients. And her personal life has changed a lot compared to the last book and keeps changing throughout this one.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Signs for Lost Children?
When Ally's visit to Manchester comes to an end. Also, Tom's journey through Japan was incredible.
What about Merield Scholfield’s performance did you like?
It was completely unobtrusive. And by that, I don't mean that it wasn't memorable. Even a great narrator can sometimes make me feel that they're obstructing the flow of the story, but not her. I thoroughly enjoyed her style.
Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Yes, I did. It made me cry a couple of times. It moved me deeply and it was one of those books leaves me thinking about it even when I'm already halfway through the next one. The personal journeys the characters go through and their emotions are so well described, that at times I felt what they were feeling. And I find some of the things they go through so relatable! I've been through a couple of those situations and I couldn't believe the author's ability to capture the emotions and thought they provoked.