
Home Fires
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $26.13
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lucy Scott
-
By:
-
Elizabeth Day
About this listen
A stunning, delicate portrait of a family bookended by war, Home Fires explores the legacy of loss, the strictures of class and the long road to redemption.
Max Weston, twenty-one, leaves for his first army posting in central Africa. What happens to him changes the lives of his family forever. At home, his parents struggle to cope. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her only child is now matched by the intensity of Max's absence. The silence is broken by the arrival of Caroline's mother-in-law, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself. After years of living in fear of putting a foot wrong in front of this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady, finally, Caroline has the upper hand.
©2013 Elizabeth Day (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
-
Paradise City
- By: Elizabeth Day
- Narrated by: Melissa Woodbridge
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beatrice Kizza, a woman in flight from a homeland that condemned her for daring to love, flees to London. There, she shields her sorrow from the indifference of her adopted city and navigates a nighttime world of shift work and bedsits. Howard Pink is a self-made millionaire who has risen from Petticoat Lane to the mansions of Kensington on a tide of determination and bluster. Yet self-doubt still snaps at his heels, and his life is shadowed by the terrible loss that has shaken him to his foundations.
By: Elizabeth Day
-
Magpie
- By: Elizabeth Day
- Narrated by: Tanya Reynolds
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marisa and Jake are a perfect couple. And Kate, their new lodger, is the perfect roommate—and not just because her rent payments will give them the income they need to start trying for the baby of their dreams. Except—no one is truly perfect. Sure, Kate doesn’t seem to care much about personal boundaries and can occasionally seem overly familiar with Jake. But Marisa doesn’t let it concern her, knowing that soon Kate will be gone, and it will just be her, Jake, and their future baby.
-
-
Good performance, bad story
- By Clarissa Laws on 05-27-22
By: Elizabeth Day
-
A Good Hard Look
- A Novel
- By: Ann Napolitano
- Narrated by: Debra Monk
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Crippled by lupus at 25, celebrated author Flannery O'Connor was forced to leave New York City and return home to Andalusia, her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. Years later, as Flannery is finishing a novel and tending to her menagerie of peacocks, her mother drags her to the wedding of a family friend....
-
-
A rare five star
- By Jennifer Peden on 02-08-23
By: Ann Napolitano
-
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Jim Broadbent
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.
-
-
Wonderful Walkabout
- By FanB14 on 07-01-13
By: Rachel Joyce
-
The Last Letter from Your Lover
- A Novel
- By: Jojo Moyes
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sophisticated, pause-resisting double love story spanning 40 years-an unforgettable Brief Encounter for our times. It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband. Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives.
-
-
What's so Great About Jennifer?
- By FanB14 on 03-04-14
By: Jojo Moyes
-
I Let You Go
- By: Clare Mackintosh
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber, Steven Crossley
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past. At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run.
-
-
Compelling thriller
- By Nerida on 05-15-16
By: Clare Mackintosh
-
Paradise City
- By: Elizabeth Day
- Narrated by: Melissa Woodbridge
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beatrice Kizza, a woman in flight from a homeland that condemned her for daring to love, flees to London. There, she shields her sorrow from the indifference of her adopted city and navigates a nighttime world of shift work and bedsits. Howard Pink is a self-made millionaire who has risen from Petticoat Lane to the mansions of Kensington on a tide of determination and bluster. Yet self-doubt still snaps at his heels, and his life is shadowed by the terrible loss that has shaken him to his foundations.
By: Elizabeth Day
-
Magpie
- By: Elizabeth Day
- Narrated by: Tanya Reynolds
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marisa and Jake are a perfect couple. And Kate, their new lodger, is the perfect roommate—and not just because her rent payments will give them the income they need to start trying for the baby of their dreams. Except—no one is truly perfect. Sure, Kate doesn’t seem to care much about personal boundaries and can occasionally seem overly familiar with Jake. But Marisa doesn’t let it concern her, knowing that soon Kate will be gone, and it will just be her, Jake, and their future baby.
-
-
Good performance, bad story
- By Clarissa Laws on 05-27-22
By: Elizabeth Day
-
A Good Hard Look
- A Novel
- By: Ann Napolitano
- Narrated by: Debra Monk
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Crippled by lupus at 25, celebrated author Flannery O'Connor was forced to leave New York City and return home to Andalusia, her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. Years later, as Flannery is finishing a novel and tending to her menagerie of peacocks, her mother drags her to the wedding of a family friend....
-
-
A rare five star
- By Jennifer Peden on 02-08-23
By: Ann Napolitano
-
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Jim Broadbent
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.
-
-
Wonderful Walkabout
- By FanB14 on 07-01-13
By: Rachel Joyce
-
The Last Letter from Your Lover
- A Novel
- By: Jojo Moyes
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sophisticated, pause-resisting double love story spanning 40 years-an unforgettable Brief Encounter for our times. It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband. Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives.
-
-
What's so Great About Jennifer?
- By FanB14 on 03-04-14
By: Jojo Moyes
-
I Let You Go
- By: Clare Mackintosh
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber, Steven Crossley
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past. At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run.
-
-
Compelling thriller
- By Nerida on 05-15-16
By: Clare Mackintosh
-
The Paying Guests
- By: Sarah Waters
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.
-
-
Difference of Opinion
- By Mel on 12-17-14
By: Sarah Waters
-
The Lost Letters
- By: Sarah Mitchell
- Narrated by: Tara Ward
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Martha’s beloved father dies, he leaves her two things: a mysterious stash of letters to an English woman named "Catkins" and directions to a beach hut in the English seaside town of Wells-Next-the-Sea. Martha is at a painful crossroads in her own life and seizes this chance for a trip to England - to discover more about her family’s past and the identity of her father’s secret correspondent.
-
-
Intriguing story.
- By LJStevie on 03-19-19
By: Sarah Mitchell
-
The Key
- By: Kathryn Hughes
- Narrated by: Joanne Froggatt
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1956. It's Ellen Crosby's first day as a student nurse at Ambergate Hospital. When she meets a young woman admitted by her father, little does Ellen know that a choice she will make is to change both their lives for ever...2006. Sarah is drawn to the now abandoned Ambergate. Whilst exploring the old corridors she discovers a suitcase belonging to a female patient who entered Ambergate fifty years earlier. The shocking contents, untouched for half a century, will lead Sarah to unravel a forgotten story of tragedy and lost love, and the chance to make an old wrong right.
-
-
If you like Lifetime movies
- By anne on 10-29-18
By: Kathryn Hughes
-
Letters to the Lost
- By: Iona Grey
- Narrated by: Avita Jay
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late on a frozen February evening, a young woman is running through the streets of London. Having fled from her abusive boyfriend and with nowhere to go, Jess stumbles onto a forgotten lane where a small, clearly unlived in old house offers her best chance of shelter for the night. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives and when she can't help but open it, she finds herself drawn inexorably into the story of two lovers from another time.
-
-
Reading Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey is Time Well Spent
- By Donna on 11-12-15
By: Iona Grey
-
The Hand That First Held Mine
- By: Maggie O’Farrell
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lexie Sinclair yearns for more than her parents’ genteel country life. She makes her way to the city, where she meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling world of Bohemian postwar London, and Lexie learns to become a reporter, to know art and artists, to live fully, unconventionally, and with deep love. And when she finds herself pregnant by a man wholly unsuitable for marriage or fatherhood, she doesn’t hesitate a minute to have the baby on her own.
-
-
Enjoy as much as I did.
- By Anonymous User on 11-09-21
By: Maggie O’Farrell
-
Gracie's Secret
- By: Jill Childs
- Narrated by: Alison Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Time stops for Jen when her beloved daughter, Gracie, is involved in a terrible car crash. Pronounced dead at the scene, it's a miracle when paramedics manage to then resuscitate the little girl. The relief Jen feels at Gracie's recovery is matched only by her fury at the driver of the car - her ex-husband's new girlfriend, Ella. Jen has never trusted Ella, and now her worst fears have been confirmed.
-
-
Sneaks up on you
- By Loves2Read on 08-09-18
By: Jill Childs
-
The Oceans Between Us
- By: Gill Thompson
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by extraordinary true events, this remarkable debut novel reveals the enduring power of love and the strength of the human spirit in one woman's quest to find her son, and a little boy's dream to be found.
-
-
so much sadness and tragedy
- By LaLa on 08-25-20
By: Gill Thompson
-
The Secret
- The Number One Best-Selling Author of The Letter
- By: Kathryn Hughes
- Narrated by: Rachel Atkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mary has been nursing a secret. Forty years ago, she made a choice that would change her world for ever, and alter the path of someone she holds dear. Beth is searching for answers. She has never known the truth about her parentage, but finding out could be the lifeline her sick child so desperately needs. When Beth finds a faded newspaper cutting amongst her mother's things, she realises the key to her son's future lies in her own past. She must go back to where it all began to unlock...the Secret.
-
-
I loved reading the book so much but some time has past so I decided to have a listen while I knit.
- By Shaun on 07-24-19
By: Kathryn Hughes
-
In Her Wake
- By: Amanda Jennings
- Narrated by: Kate Rawson
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A tragic family event reveals devastating news that rips apart Bella's comfortable existence. Embarking on a personal journey to uncover the truth, she faces a series of traumatic discoveries that take her to the ruggedly beautiful Cornish coast, where hidden truths, past betrayals and a 25-year-old mystery threaten not just her identity but her life.
-
-
Slow
- By aaron f. on 05-17-16
By: Amanda Jennings
-
The Woman Next Door
- By: Cass Green
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck, Bea Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two suburban women. Two dark secrets. The almost perfect murder. Everybody needs good neighbours.... Melissa and Hester have lived next door to each other for years. When Melissa's daughter was younger, Hester was almost like a grandmother to her. But recently they haven't been so close. Hester has plans to change all that. It's obvious to her that despite Melissa's outwardly glamorous and successful life, she needs Hester's help.
-
-
Biting, Beguiling, Will make you smile AND shudder
- By MarisaReads on 01-07-17
By: Cass Green
-
The Housemaid
- By: Sarah A. Denzil
- Narrated by: Sophie Rundle
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It seems like the perfect job. Great wages, accommodation provided and all located within the walls of Highwood Hall, a stunning stately home owned by the Howard family. Not many little girls dream of becoming a maid, but this is an opportunity for me to get back on my feet. And for me to revisit my past....
-
-
FANTASTIC@@@!
- By Kelly on 12-23-21
By: Sarah A. Denzil
-
Mother
- By: S. E. Lynes
- Narrated by: Tamsin Kennard
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christopher would never hurt anyone. Not intentionally. Even after everything that’s happened, I still believe that... Christopher Harris is a lonely boy. A boy who has never fit into his family. Who has always felt something was missing from his life. Until one day, when he discovers a suitcase in his family’s attic, and a secret about his mother that changes everything.... Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train, The Sister, and Apple Tree Yard.
-
-
great story
- By Easy Organizing Solutions on 06-17-18
By: S. E. Lynes
Critic reviews
‘Elizabeth Day writes with unflinching, responsible honesty; I was inspired and enlightened by the deep humanity of Home Fires’ Sadie Jones
‘Day is an empathetic observer. She is meticulous in teaching and dissecting each sentence her characters experience … The prose is deliberate, precise and bone dry … Elizabeth Day pursues her study of characters attempting to keep the past at bay with a biblical intensity reminiscent of early Anita Brookner and a prose style closer to that of Pat Barker … Home Fires conveys a broader version of life with the claustrophobia of emotional repression’ Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
‘Day has created a compelling study of grief, not least the conflicting ways in which the bereaved may wish to remember the dead … A bold novel, shocking in what it confronts and also in its suggestion that love will, ultimately, survive trauma’ Daily Telegraph
‘Day's great strength is her insight … An elegant, addictive portrayal of a family at war with its past. A beautifully written novel whose quietly discomfiting tone stays with you for a long while afterwards’ Observer
‘Deeply moving’ Woman's Own
‘Very sad and very lovely’ Grazia
‘An elegant meditation … Elizabeth Day's lyrical Home Fires comes highly recommended’ Viv Groskop, Observer Book of the Year