Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
  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

A Spool of Blue Thread

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2015
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Kimberly Farr

This audiobook uses AI narration.

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

Learn more
Length 13 hours 18 minutes
Language English
  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

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE


SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S FICTION PRIZE


A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK


‘It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…’

This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer’s day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before.

From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century – four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home…

'One of my favourite authors' Liane Moriarty

'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan

'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve

'Anne Tyler is one of my favourite writers and this is a delicious book' Rachel Joyce

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grown-ups, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Clock Dance, Redhead by the Side of the Road and French Braid.

In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize; and in 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

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

Reviews

Tyler's twentieth novel finds fresh fictional riches in imaginative territory she has been exploring for half a century... Atmospherically rendered, the passage of time has both entertaining and heart-rending results. She has never written with more finesse, vitality and acuteness I love Tyler's writing... She writes so beautifully and with such insight. Read her books and she can actually change your view, change how you see the world Exquisite Tyler's sentences are wholly hers, instantly recognisable and impossible to duplicate The extraordinary thing about her writing is the extent to which she makes one believe every word, deed and breath Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting