ALL THE BROKEN PLACES

By John Boyne

Synopsis

1946. Three years after a cataclysmic event that tore their lives apart, a mother and daughter flee Poland for Paris, shame and fear at their heels, not knowing how hard it is to escape your past. Nearly 80 years later, Gretel Fernsby lives a life that is a far cry from her traumatic childhood. When a couple moves into the flat below her in her London mansion block, it should be nothing more than a momentary inconvenience. However, the appearance of their nine-year-old son, Henry, brings back memories she would rather forget. Faced with a choice between her own safety and his, Gretel is taken back to a similar crossroads she encountered long ago. All the Broken Places is John Boyne's masterful sequel to his classic best seller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, taking a character from that novel on a journey to a place she never goes—the past. Through her story, he explores the aftermath of the war and the effects of a lifetime of guilt.

Sample Player

Narrator	Kristin Atherton
Length	12hrs 30mins
Catalogue No.	16149
Publisher	Transworld; 2022

Other audiobooks by John Boyne

THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN

When Pierrot becomes an orphan, he leaves his home in Paris for a new life with his Aunt Beatrix, a servant in a wealthy household at the top of the German mountains. But this is 1935 and the Second World War is fast approaching; and this is no ordinary house, for this is the Berghof, the home of Adolf Hitler...

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS

Nine-year-old Bruno has been moved from his comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area where there is no-one to play with until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the adjoining wire fence and wears a uniform of striped pyjamas. A story of innocence existing within the most terrible evil.

THE CONGRESS OF ROUGH RIDERS

William Cody grows up surrounded by his father's tales of Buffalo Bill, to whom he is distantly related, and his own fantasies of the Wild West. Though he escapes his heritage by fleeing abroad and starting a new life for himself, he finds that he is always drawn back to England and to his ancestry. When tragedy strikes however, it is to his father that he eventually returns.

THE ECHO CHAMBER

What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds - and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept. The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path. Powered by John Boyne's characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.

THE HEART'S INVISIBLE FURIES

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from - and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more. In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.

THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE

Russia, 1915: Sixteen year Georgy Jachmenev steps in front of an assassin's bullet intended for a senior member of the Russian Imperial Family and is proclaimed a hero. Rewarded with the position of bodyguard to Alexei Romanov, the son of Tsar Nicholas II, the course of his life is changed for ever. Privy to the secrets of Nicholas and Alexandra, Georgy is both a witness and participant in a drama that will echo down the century.

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY: A NOVEL

In 1787 14-year-old John Jacob Turnstile is destined for prison in Portsmouth when he receives an offer - to be the captain's personal valet on a ship soon to sail for Tahiti. The ship is the Bounty and the captain is William Bligh. This novel recreates the long voyage and the high drama of the famous mutiny.

MY BROTHERS NAME IS JESSICA

Sam Waver's life has always been pretty quiet. A bit of a loner, he struggles to make friends, and his busy parents often make him feel invisible. Luckily for Sam, his older brother, Jason, has always been there for him. Sam idolises Jason, who seems to have life sorted - he's kind, popular and amazing at football, and girls are falling over themselves to date him. But then one evening Jason calls his family together to tell them that he's been struggling with a secret for a long time. A secret which quickly threatens to tear them all apart. His parents don't want to know, and Sam simply doesn't understand.Because what do you do when your brother says he's not your brother at all? That he thinks he's actually...your sister?

NEXT OF KIN

It is 1936, and while charismatic aristocrat Owen Montignac is awaiting the reading of his uncle's will, London is abuzz wth gossip about the affair between Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson. When the King's and Owen's dilemmas find each other, an evil and dangerous plot is executed, which may well mean a shameful death for an innocent young man.

THE TERRIBLE THING THAT HAPPENED TO BARNABY BROCKET

Barnaby Brocket is an ordinary 8-year-old boy in most ways, but unlike everyone else, Barnaby does not obey the law of gravity: he floats! Barnaby finds himself on a journey that takes him all over the world, and even to space. The floating boy meets all sorts of different people - and discovers who he really is along the way.

THE THIEF OF TIME

Matthieu Zela's body stopped ageing before the end of the eighteenth century. Starting in 1758, the story of his life takes us from the French Revolution to 1920s Hollywood, from the Great Exhibition to the Wall Street Crash, and by the end of the twentieth century, Matthieu has been an engineer, a rogue, a movie mogul, a soldier, a financier, a lover to many, a cable TV executive and much more besides.

WATER

The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past. But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes? Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did - and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.