The Story Keeper: A twisty, atmospheric story of folk tales, family secrets and disappearances Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Anna Mazzola (Author), Sarah Barron (Narrator), Tinder Press (Publisher)

218 ratings

See all formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$12.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$67.95

$65.00

$22.91

Paperback

"Please retry"

$6.38

—

From the author of The Unseeing comes a sizzling period novel of folktales, disappearances and injustice set on the Isle of Skye, sure to appeal to readers of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites or Beth Underdown's The Witch Finder's Sister.

Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the folk and fairy tales of the people and communities around her. It is 1857, and the Highland Clearances have left devastation and poverty and a community riven by fear. The crofters are suspicious and hostile to a stranger, claiming they no longer know their fireside stories.

Then Audrey discovers the body of a young girl washed up on the beach, and the crofters reveal that it is only a matter of weeks since another girl disappeared. They believe the girls are the victims of the restless dead: spirits who take the form of birds.

Initially, Audrey is sure the girls are being abducted, but as events accumulate she begins to wonder if something else is at work. Something which may be linked to the death of her own mother many years before.

Listening Length

8 hours and 49 minutes
Author

Anna Mazzola
Narrator

Sarah Barron
Audible release date

26 July 2018
Language

English
Publisher

Tinder Press
ASIN

B07C2T7YDF
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
See all details

Read & Listen

Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible narration with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $10.99 after you buy the Kindle book.

Get this audiobook free then 1 credit each month, good for any title you like - yours to keep, even if you cancel
Listen all you want to the Plus Catalogue—a selection of thousands of Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts, including exclusive series
Exclusive member-only deals
$16.45 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime

Learn more about membership

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice.

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

Related to this topic

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

Product details

Listening Length	8 hours and 49 minutes
Author	Anna Mazzola
Narrator	Sarah Barron
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	26 July 2018
Publisher	Tinder Press
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B07C2T7YDF
Best Sellers Rank	54,809 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 3,889 in Historical Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 16,701 in Historical Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews

5 star		50%
4 star		31%
3 star		12%
2 star		4%
1 star		2%

How are ratings calculated?

Review this product

Write a customer review

Top review from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Sue Wallace

A fantastic read.

Reviewed in Australia on 26 July 2018

The story keeper by Anna mazzola.
This was a fantastic read with brilliant characters. There were some characters I didn't like.
Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the word-of-mouth folk tales of the people and communities around her.
Why did Isbeil die?
why won't Miss Buchanan leave her home?
Dr McGilvray alec who is it? Making girls disappear?
Why do some speak in Gaelic?
I really hated Samuel after the threatening letter he wrote Audrey.
Why were they setting Mairi up as a theif?
Will Constable Norris find out the truth?
Her father Dr Edwin Hart now wants Audrey to come home. Why?
I didn't see that coming. I had someone in my mind who was making girls disappear. 5*.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Little Bookness Lane

A captivating historical mystery bound by folklore and fear.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 October 2018

Verified Purchase

"The Story Keeper" invites you into the lives of an island community honouring their traditions, despite the bleakness of losing their homes and even their beliefs.

Among the remaining islanders, anything remotely ‘unexplained’ still attracts an element of superstition, which threatens to silence the stark reality. Yet in an era where you could be judged simply according to your title, profession, or merely your gender, choosing whether to speak out provides a constant theme of ‘conscience vs consequence’ throughout.

Descriptions of the location and events are artfully atmospheric, and helping the mystery gather strength are the fairy tale snippets that introduce each chapter. I could easily imagine the inhabitants huddled in their sparse, stone cottages, keeping the stories alive even when the book was closed.

A captivating historical mystery bound by folklore and fear.

9 people found this helpful

Mary P

Amagnificent story of death, destruction and stubborn courage.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 January 2019

Verified Purchase

The Story Keeper is set in God’s own garden, the beautiful, haunting landscape of the Isle of Skye, my favourite place on earth. Set in a time of deep trouble for its residents, when greed and pitiless cruelty were in the forefront of driving every hard-working person from the island. For his is the time of the clearances; a time when Gaelic is about to be put under serious threat; when traditional farming methods can no longer sustain families and when landlords are both increasing rents and turning people off land they have family farmed for generations.

This is the atmospheric and haunting setting for the exploration of the myths and legends of the island. Audrey Hart has travelled from London, she has pretty much run away by the sound of it, though we don’t know why and she takes the long and wet journey to Lanerly Hall on Skye. Presided over by the matriarchal figure of Miss Buchanan, Lanerly Hall is an old, dilapidated house full of stuffed animals and creaking corridors.

Audrey has come in response to an advert placed by Miss Buchanan, seeking someone who can help her collect the stories of the islanders; the myths and legends of the legendary faerie folk that still form part of their daily superstitions and practices, especially around the sea.

For just as the islanders way of life is under threat, so is the tradition of oral story telling passed down through generations and Miss Buchanan is determined to capture the stories before they are lost for ever.

Arriving into this maelstrom of change, and with an agenda of her own, Audrey must contend with a hostile game-keeper, a laird who seems to have little or no compassion for his tenants; a minister who breathes fire and fury and a group of villagers who are less than impressed by incomers. When girls start to go missing, that suspicion only intensifies and Audrey has no idea who she can trust.

Anna Mazzola creates a beautifully dark and gothic atmosphere in which to explore the folklore and legends of the islanders. Her prose is fluid and flawless and she creates a magical and mysterious environment in which anything is possible.

Sitting at her metaphorical loom, Mazzola weaves a rich and varied tapestry with multiple threads and plot lines which come together to form a magnificent story of death, destruction and stubborn courage.

6 people found this helpful

Amanda Evans

Chilling Atmospheric tale of mystery, folklore and murder

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 December 2018

Verified Purchase

Thorough enjoyed this book. I love folklore and although I don’t usually read historical fiction, the writing pulled me in from the first page. I loved the descriptions and the prose and found myself absorbed in the story. The use of Gaelic was wonderful and it was so similar to my native Irish. The story is all about Audrey who travels to Scotland to help an elderly lady collect the folklore and stories from the locals. There are young women disappearing and then showing up after a time and the locals believe its the fairies and bad spirits. I devoured this book waiting to see what was really happening on Skye and loved every bit of it. This is an author I am looking forward to reading more of. A chilling, atmospheric tale of mystery, folklore, and murder all rolled into one.

8 people found this helpful

Sara L.

Enthralling and Original Gothic Mystery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2018

Verified Purchase

The Story Keeper is a smashing novel. The characters pop off the pages. Right from the off, the main protagonist, Audrey, seamlessly drew me into the story and I felt as though the heroine’s very capillaries spoke to me. I was rooting for and journeyed with Audrey at every stage of her adventure. The other key character that I revelled in was the setting - on omnipotent presence within the tale that soaked into everything in and around it, and which seems to have taken up residence within my own bone marrow - it haunts me still.

Most exciting of all was that I found the writing flawless. Ms Mazzola has made every sentence and word, every character and story beat count so that no flabbiness exists, no tedious author’s ego shimmies through. Clues are dropped in so gracefully that the reveal at the end is a delight and the reader, certainly this one, experiences a full, rounded, evocative, satisfying read.

The Story Keeper also reveals a brilliant and original story idea well told and feels as though the entire work is several notches up from The Unseeing. The impressive and remarkable leap in writing fluidity and the verve with which Ms Mazzola has told the tale makes me wonder if either she was holding back with her debut or the difference in the the writer’s maturity is due to some kind of voodoo magic.

Either way, this ones a keeper, story and all.

4 people found this helpful

Hayley C

Fantastic and Atmospheric! I really enjoyed it!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 September 2019

Verified Purchase

Audrey Hart is a young woman who has left London to travel to Skye to work collecting folk tales from the local area. Her late mother had also been interested in folklore and had traveled to areas nearby so she is also wanting to know more about her. She moves in with Mrs Buchanan, the lady who she’ll be collecting the tales for, and begins to settle in. Soon after her arrival she finds a body on the beach and from this point on real life begins to blur with the folklore for Audrey.

The Story Keeper is a fantastic novel. The writing is wonderful and so atmospheric. I felt the oppressive atmosphere in a small place where people are very insular and don’t want to share their lives and their stories with incomers.

Audrey is a great character. I was in awe of her travelling from London to Skye on her own in a time when this would have been a scary and courageous thing for a young woman to do alone. I felt for her at the lack of a mother in her life, I know what it’s like to lose your mum and could see how lost she was and how at the root of everything she was looking to find a sense of her mum somewhere. As Audrey began to get more and more drawn into the folklore and to see some of the happenings that the islanders spoke about I was really hoping that she was going to be okay. I was rooting for her to be able to make a home and a life, and to feel settled again.

There is so much mystery in this novel and I loved how it was possible to find yourself believing that there must be something in the folklore as the horrible things happening on the island were so similar to the stories, whilst at the same time the rational side of your brain is thinking that there must be another reason for the coincidences and odd happenings.

I got so absorbed in this novel and felt really jolted when real life brought me back to where I was. It’s not often that a novel captures me to that degree and it was wonderful to be so enthralled. The Story keeper is a brilliant, atmospheric and utterly gripping novel and I highly recommend it!

One person found this helpful

See all reviews

The Story Keeper: A twisty, atmospheric story of folk tales, family secrets and disappearances Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Read & Listen

Free with Audible Trial $0.00

Pay with 1-Click $33.43

Related to this topic

Product details

Customer reviews

Review this product

Top review from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Free with Audible Trial

$0.00

Pay with 1-Click

$33.43