Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

The Brutal Telling

A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

$28.34

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Ralph Cosham

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 13 hours 14 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

"Ralph Cosham delivers a delightful accent for Gamache and invests all the characters with small-town likability." —AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

The wise and beleaguered Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns to Three Pines The Brutal Telling, the fifth book in Louise Penny's #1 New York Times bestselling series.


Chaos is coming, old son.

With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. Everybody goes to Olivier's Bistro—including a stranger whose murdered body is found on the floor. When Chief Inspector Gamache is called to investigate, he is dismayed to discover that Olivier's story is full of holes. Why are his fingerprints all over the cabin that's uncovered deep in the wilderness, with priceless antiques and the dead man's blood? And what other secrets and layers of lies are buried in the seemingly idyllic village?

Gamache follows a trail of clues and treasures—from first editions of Charlotte's Web and Jane Eyre to a spiderweb with a word mysteriously woven in it—into the woods and across the continent, before returning to Three Pines to confront the truth and the final, brutal telling.

LOUISE PENNY is the multi-award winning author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels, set in her home province of Québec, Canada. Her books, including State of Terror written with Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sold more than 18 million copies worldwide, topped international bestseller lists, including the New York Times, and been translated into 32 languages. The recipient of both the Order of Canada and l’Ordre national du Québec, her country’s highest civilian honours, her Three Pines Foundation reaches out to those in crisis and offers financial and emotional support, with a special focus on literacy as well as dementia care. Her husband, Michael, died of dementia in 2016. She lives with her Golden Retriever Muggins in a village south of Montréal.

Ralph Cosham is best known as the voice behind all of Louise Penny’s bestselling Chief Inspector Gamache novels. He won the 2013 Audie Award for Louise Penny’s A Beautiful Mystery. He is a film, stage, and voice actor who narrated over 100 audiobooks, including Frankenstein, Around the World in Eighty Days, Alice in Wonderland, and Watership Down. His audiobook credits include works by C.S. Lewis, Simon Brett and C.S. Forester.  Several of his works have been awarded Audio Best of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting