Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
Candles Burning by Tabitha King & Michael McDowell
  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!

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

Sign up today

Candles Burning

A Novel

$20.99

Retail price: $27.95

Discount: 24%

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

Narrator Carrington MacDuffie

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 15 hours 55 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

Author Michael McDowell, known for his chilling Blackwater series, left behind the unfinished manuscript of Candles Burning upon his death in 1999. His close friend, Tabitha King, has taken up where he left off, weaving a Southern gothic fabric of murder, guilt, innocence, corruption, and survival, in the voices of the living and the dead.

Seven-year-old Calley Dakin is daddyโ€™s little girl, but her well-born mother persists in her contempt for the Dakin name. When her daddy is tortured and murdered by two women with no discernible motivation, Calley and her mother find themselves caught up in inexplicable events that exile them to Pensacola Beach. There, another woman awaits their presence, a woman who knows what Calley is and who seeks to control herโ€”for Calley is no ordinary little girl.

Tabitha King is the acclaimed author of Small World, Survivor, The Book of Reuben, and many other titles. The wife of novelist Stephen King, she lives in Maine.

Michael McDowell (1950โ€“1999) was an American novelist and screenwriter, the author of numerous mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror novels, including the six volumes of the Blackwater series. In 1985 he wrote the screenplay for the movie Clue, which was based on the board game and included three different endings.

Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor and recording artist who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook, Many Things Invisible. Alongside her narration work, she has released a new album of original songs, Only an Angel.

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!

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

Sign up today

Reviews

“A mix of magic realism and Southern gothic, this stunning collaboration…moves at a hypnotic pace, like an Alabama water moccasin slipping through black water.”

“MacDuffie portrays the child Calley with a little girl voice and a mild Southern accent yet still manages to convey a child who is smarter than her years…As the story develops, King and MacDuffie slowly reveal the how and why of Calley’s gift.”

“[A] lightly supernatural confection…King completes it beautifully as to tone, aura, and flavor, and it's funny and intriguing, magnetically readable.”

“This is Truman Capote/Carson McCullers country with a Pandora guided by ghostly voices…grand and deeply satisfying.”

Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting