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Dear Child

A Novel

by Romy Hausmann

Length 10 hours 56 minutes

Language English

Narrators Jane Collingwood, Nicky Diss, Romy Hausmann & Simon Slater

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Bookseller recommendation

“We’ve all heard the horror stories of women kept captive in basements, bearing children to madmen, only to escape after years of torture into a world they no longer remember and a public filled with fascination at their stories. Dear Child features two such women, both victims of the same abductor, but who suffer two very different fates. It is also the story of men who love too hard, in both the right ways and the wrong ways. At its heart it is the story of family, of what we will do to find those we’ve lost, how we love and show that love, and how we survive and come to peace with grief and guilt.”
— Deborah Magness • Third Place Books

Summary
About the author
About the narrators

"Jane Collingwood, Nicky Diss, and Simon Slater narrate as three parts of a fractured triangle brought together by a terrifying abduction...this mind-bending thriller is sure to enthrall listeners." -- AudioFile Magazine

This program includes an exclusive author's note, read by Romy Hausmann

Bustle Best Books of Fall 2020
Publishers Weekly Top 10 Mysteries & Thrillers of Fall 2020
She Reads Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2020

A woman held captive finally escapes—but can she ever really get away?

Gone Girl meets Room in this #1 internationally bestselling thriller from one of Germany’s hottest new talents

A windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare.

She says her name is Lena. Lena, who disappeared without a trace 14 years prior. She fits the profile. She has the distinctive scar. But her family swears that she isn’t their Lena.

The little girl who escaped the woods with her knows things she isn’t sharing, and Lena’s devastated father is trying to piece together details that don’t quite fit. Lena is desperate to begin again, but something tells her that her tormentor still wants to get back what belongs to him…and that she may not be able to truly escape until the whole truth about what happened in the woods finally emerges.

Twisty, suspenseful, and psychologically clever, Romy Hausmann's Dear Child is a captivating thriller with all the ingredients of a breakout hit.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

"A trio of well-cast, English-accented performers embody the unreliable narrators of German author Hausmann's debut thriller, each of whom is harboring secrets...Nothing is as it seems here, and listeners will be enthralled as each new twist is revealed." --Booklist

“Chilling, original and mesmerizing.” --David Baldacci

“[A] tantalizingly disturbing debut…As enthralling as it is thought-provoking.” --New York Times Book Review

Fiction Mystery & Thriller

Romy Hausmann lives with her family at a remote house in the woods in Stuttgart, Germany. Dear Child is her English-language debut.

Simon Slater is the narrator of Hilary Mantel’s bestselling book Wolf Hall, which won an AudioFile Earphones Award. Slater’s film credits include Dealers, Iron Lady, Hornblower and Entrapment. His work as a theatrical actor includes a five-year run in the musical Mamma Mia! as Sam Charmichael, as well as Forbidden Broadway (Fortune), Waiting for Godot, and Wind in the Willows (Nuffield Southampton). Slater has made guest appearances in many TV series, including Heartbeat, Birds of a Feather, Doctor Who, Inspector Morse, Lovejoy, Monarch of the Glen and Where the Heart Is. Slater has also appeared in the Theatre Royal In Winchester playing Captain Hook in a performance of Peter Pan during the Christmas season of 2010/2011.