The Chaperone cover art

The Chaperone

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 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.

The Chaperone

By: Laura Moriarty
Narrated by: McGovern Elizabeth
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 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

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 Made into a feature film by the creators of Downton Abbey, The Chaperone is a New York Times-bestselling novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in the 1920s and the summer that would change them both.

Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever.

For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.

Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s, ’30s, and beyond—from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women—Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them. Biographical Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Biography New York Adoption Witty

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Memory of Us cover art
Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures cover art
The After Party cover art
Room of My Own cover art
A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty cover art
As Bright as Heaven cover art
The Poisonwood Bible cover art
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes cover art
The Color Purple cover art
A Town Like Alice cover art
Virgins cover art
Wildflower Hill cover art
A Prayer for Owen Meany cover art
The Forgotten Garden cover art
A Kiss from Mr. Fitzgerald cover art
The Valley of Amazement cover art

Critic reviews

“It’s impossible not to be completely drawn in by The Chaperone. Laura Moriarty has delivered the richest and realest possible heroine in Cora Carlisle, a Wichita housewife who has her mind and heart blown wide open, and steps—with uncommon courage—into the fullness of her life. What a beautiful book. I loved every page.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

“What a charming, mesmerizing, transporting novel! The characters are so fully realized that I felt I was right there alongside them. A beautiful clarity marks both the style and structure of The Chaperone.”—Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife and Adam & Eve

“The Chaperone is the best kind of historical fiction, transporting you to another time and place, but even more importantly delivering a poignant story about people so real, you'll miss and remember them long after you close the book.”—Jenna Blum, author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers
All stars
Most relevant
Wonderful written (and read by Elizabeth) the story brings you back in time. the jumping in time, to tell Cora’s story is amazing! it grips you to the end.

Takes you back in time

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I am fascinated by anything related to Louise Brooks, so this story, with it's snippets of LB information interested me even though the story in this book is a made up fiction. The author does a decent job of weaving historical LB material into her story, giving a new perspective to LB, but I could have done with more of this, and a lot less of all the other characters. Too much sentimentality at the end caused me to bore of all the other people. Needed better editing. The resulting film is a more appropriate length. Congrats to the author for finding a way to write about LB by writing about somebody else (I believe LB never wanted her story told)

Interesting but Overlong

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautiful - exquisitely written and read Gorgeous period detail from victorian era & 1922 onwards.

Wonderful rich read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.