Skip content
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
  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
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!

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

Make the switch
Libro.fm app with gift bow

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

The Cloisters

The Secret History for a new generation – an instant Sunday Times bestseller
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Emily Tremaine

This audiobook uses AI narration.

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

Learn more
Length 10 hours 15 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

Brought to you by Penguin.

Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, hoping to spend her summer working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she is assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art.

There she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, each with their own secrets and desires, including the museum's curator, Patrick Roland, who is convinced that the history of Tarot holds the key to unlocking contemporary fortune telling.

Relieved to have left her troubled past behind and eager for the approval of her new colleagues, Ann is only too happy to indulge some of Patrick's more outlandish theories. But when Ann discovers a mysterious, once-thought lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards she suddenly finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition.

And as the game being played within the Cloisters spirals out of control, Ann must decide whether she is truly able to defy the cards and shape her own future . . .

Bringing together the modern and the arcane, The Cloisters is a rich, thrillingly told tale of obsession and the ruthless pursuit of power.

© Katy Hays 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Katy Hays is an adjunct professor of Art History at Sierra College and holds a BA from UC Santa Cruz, an MA from Williams College and attended UC Berkeley for her PhD in Art History. Her academic work has been published by Ashgate, and her writing has been featured in Belladonna magazine. She also serves on the board of the Community of Writers, whose workshops take place every summer in Olympic Valley, California, where she lives. Having worked in curatorial and research roles at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Musée D'Orsay and The Clark Art Institute, she brings an insider's knowledge of the workings of museums and galleries as well as indepth research about the fascinating history of fortune-telling to The Cloisters, her first novel.

Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!

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

Make the switch
Libro.fm app with gift bow

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

The dark and enigmatic world of The Cloisters captured me from the off . . . a story of academic obsession, Renaissance magic and the ruthless pursuit of power. Captivating in every sense. Elegant and atmospheric and suffused with brooding menace, The Cloisters transports us to the dark corridors of museum life, embroiling the reader in a twisting mystery, while also intelligently exploring the nature of fate versus freewill. Glamour, power, seduction, ambition - The Cloisters has it all. I adored this deliciously gothic, beautifully written novel. This is a modern, Gothic masterpiece. Successfully linking modern critical thinking with the divinity of the past, and human nature's desire to believe that there is something else out there. 9/10 Beguiling and atmospheric, an entrancing and gripping tale. Expand reviews