Skip content
Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch
Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
  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
Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Blackbird House

$17.96

Retail price: $19.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Length 5 hours 45 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

With "incantatory prose" that "sweeps over the reader like a dream" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future with an evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family's lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

From the writer that Time has said tells "truths powerful enough to break a reader's heart" comes a glorious travelogue through time and fate, through loss and love and survival. Welcome to Blackbird House.

Alice Hoffman is the bestselling author of seventeen acclaimed novels, including The Ice Queen, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, The River King, Blue Diary, Illumination Night, Turtle Moon, Seventh Heaven, and At Risk, as well as the highly praised story collections Local Girls and Blackbird House.

British narrator John Lee has read audiobooks in almost every conceivable genre, from Charles Dickens to Patrick O'Brian, and from the very real life of Napoleon to the entirely imagined lives of sorcerers and swashbucklers. He has won numerous Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards, and he was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile in 2009. Lee is also an accomplished stage actor and wrote and coproduced the feature films Breathing Hard and Forfeit.

Xe Sands is an award-winning narrator known for her authentic characterizations and intimate delivery. She has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo, The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro, and Survival Lessons by Alice Hoffman. Sands has also been recognized for her engaging romance narrations and was named Most Impressive Narrator Discovery for titles such as Catch of the Day by Kristan Higgins and On Thin Ice by Anne Stuart.

Amy Rubinate has narrated over 250 audiobooks and won multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her books have been selected for AudioFile’s Best Romance of 2016 list; Booklist’s Top 10 Romance, Top 10 Historical Fiction, Editor’s Choice Media; and YALSA’s Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults. She has a degree in oral interpretation of literature and won state and national awards for poetry reading. A voice actor and singer for over a decade, Amy has narrated many interactive children’s books and provided character voices for toys and video games. Amy’s work has been featured in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, AudioFile magazine, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal.

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

Bernadette Dunne is the winner of more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.

Tavia Gilbert has recorded hundreds of titles across a wide span of genres, including Erica Spindler romantic thrillers, John Scalzi science fiction, Jeaniene Frost fantasy.  She received four Audies nominations and won three Audiofile Earphones Awards for titles The Obituary Writer, Sing Them Home and The Day of the Pelican.  In addition to voice acting, Gilbert is an accomplished producer, singer and theater actor.

Cassandra Campbell is an actress, director, and teacher who has performed in New York at the Public Theater, the Mint Theater, and the Clurman Theatre. She is an accomplished voice-over artist whose credits include numerous audiobooks, documentaries, and commercials in both Italian and English.

Hillary Huber is a multiple Audie Award finalist, an AudioFile Earphones Award winner, and an AudioFile Best Voice. She has recorded over 550 titles, spanning many genres. A huge fan of audiobooks, when she's not narrating one, she's listening to one!

Laura Hicks is an Obie Award–winning actress who has appeared on Broadway, off Broadway, and in regional theater, film, and television. A native New Yorker and a Juilliard graduate, she has performed throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Australia, Austria, Italy, and Ireland.

Kate Reading is the recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been named by AudioFile magazine as a “Voice of the Century,” as well as the Best Voice in Science Fiction & Fantasy in 2008 and 2009 and Best Voice in Biography & Culture in 2010. She has narrated works by authors as Jane Austen, Robert Jordan, Edith Wharton, and Sophie Kinsella. Reading has performed at numerous theaters in Washington D.C. and received a Helen Hayes Award for her performance in Aunt Dan and Lemon. AudioFile magazine reports that, "With subtle control of characters and sense of pacing, Kate’s performances are a consistent pleasure."

Carrington MacDuffie is a recording artist, writer, and voice actor who has narrated over 100 audiobooks and received numerous AudioFile Earphones awards and six Audie finalists. Her original audiobook of poetry and music, Many Things Invisible, was nominated for an Audie in two categories.

Kirsten Potter, a graduate of the Boston University School for the Arts, has performed on stage, film, and television, including roles on Medium, Bones, and Judging Amy. An award-winning audiobook narrator, Kirsten has won AudioFile Earphones Awards for her reading of The Snowball by Alice Schroeder and her performance as Barbara in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. Her other titles include The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley, Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson, Sammy's House by Kristen Gore, and Madapple by Christina Meldrum, which was a Booklist Editors' Choice for Best Audiobook 2008. Kirsten has received recognition from the American Academy of Achievement and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, as well as numerous regional awards.

Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Reviews

“Alice Hoffman’s writing is spellbinding and not simply because of her touches of magic realism: Her unembellished prose and primary-colored descriptions recall the directness of fairy tales.”

“The stories of Blackbird House are sharp and imbued with magic. Hoffman peels away layers of time, painstakingly sifting through two centuries to expose all that can occur by one field of pink sweet peas at the end of the world.”

“The landscape Alice Hoffman displays in Blackbird House is its own world altogether…Here the relationship of the characters to their surroundings is seen as a kind of magical bond, expressed in language that is both eerie and beautiful.”

“Sweet, sad, touching, and most of all, vibrantly real…Each tale stays true to Hoffman’s form, infused with descriptions of nature, rich emotion, and life’s complexity—each, like a fairy tale, mysterious, bewitching, and wonderful.”

“Riveting…haunting…masterful.”

“Blackbird House is filled with symbols of the strongest human emotions—hope, devotion, anger, pain. And these are described as beautifully and simply as nature itself.”

“Lush, figurative language evokes epics, ballads, odes, and fairy tales. Human destiny is determined less by individual initiative or moral choice than by fate. To survive and thrive, one must pay heed, one must be attentive to season, history, spirit.”

“A New England historical patchwork, a literary museum…Hoffman creates many charming and intriguing people and events to carry her tale.”

“[Hoffman’s] prose can cast a spell upon even the most stoic of souls, pulling them into [her] reality as easily as the tides claiming unwary swimmers…Storytelling doesn’t get any better.”

“Complex and intriguing…Hoffman’s blend of myth and local history is beguiling and uplifting.”

“Hoffman does everything right in these lyrical stories, rich with metaphor and meaning.”

“The stories showcase Hoffman’s own magical powers of description, demonstrated here by vivid evocations of the lush natural world that springs, almost miraculously, from the sparse and sandy soil.”

“Exquisite…Hoffman captures perfectly the power of place, the pull that a land and a house can exert on the imagination and the heart.”

“Twelve lush and lilting interconnected stories…Hoffman’s lyrical prose weaves an undeniable spell.”

“This full-cast recording is the perfect production for Alice Hoffman’s linked stories of life on a two-hundred-year-old Cape Cod farm. The stories farthest removed from us in time are the most magical in genre…Hoffman fans should be delighted.”

“[A] deeply moving achievement of lyric power.”

“Perhaps Hoffman writes so confidently about magical occurrences because her fecund and radiant creativity is itself a form of magic. It certainly seems as though her entrancing and mythological tales flow like water from a spring…As the stories leapfrog from colonial times toward the present, Hoffman, a subtle conjurer of telling details and ironic predicaments, orchestrates intense romances and profound sacrifices.”

Expand reviews
Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch