The Chaperone

  • Author Laura Moriarty
  • Narrator Elizabeth McGovern
  • Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
  • Run Time 13 hours and 13 minutes
  • Format Audio
  • Genre Historical fiction.
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What to expect

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone, read by the actress Elizabeth McGovern, best-known for her role as Cora, Countess of Grantham in the hit TV series Downton Abbey.

On a summer's day in 1922 Cora Carlisle boards a train from Wichita, Kansas, to New York City, leaving behind a marriage that's not as perfect as it seems and a past that she buried long ago. She is charged with the care of a stunning young girl with a jet-black fringe and eyes wild and wise beyond her fifteen years. This girl is hungry for stardom and Cora for something she doesn't yet know. Cora will be many things in her lifetime - an orphan, a mother, a wife, a mistress - but in New York she is a chaperone and her life is about to change.

It is here under the bright lights of Broadway, in a time when prohibition reigns and speakeasies with their forbidden whispers behind closed doors thrive, that Cora finds what she has been searching for. It is here, in a time when illicit thrills and daring glamour sizzle beneath the laws of propriety that her life truly begins. It is here that Cora and her charge, Louise Brooks, take their first steps towards their dreams.

Critics Review

  • This is that rare, precious and fabulous thing – a proper story, with characters you care about desperately and root for right to the end . . . I can’t recommend this novel highly enough. Moving, shocking, dramatic, clever, atmospheric, glamorous and satisfying. You’ll adore it

    Daily Mail

  • A lovely novel, full of humanity

    Sunday Times

  • It’s impossible not to be drawn in by The Chaperone. Laura Moriarty has delivered the richest and realest possible heroine in Cora Carlisle . . . What a beautiful book. I loved every page

    author of The Paris Wife

  • Enthralling . . . In this layered and inventive story, Moriarty raises profound questions about family, sexuality, history and whether it is luck or will – or a combination of the two – that makes for a wonderful life

    O Magazine

  • An evocative look at the early life of silent-film icon Louise Brooks . . . Mesmerizing

    Vogue

  • Surprising and poignant

    Entertainment Weekly

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