Old Babes in the Wood
Stories
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $31.71
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Written by:
-
Margaret Atwood
About this listen
INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the Globe and Mail and Indigo
A dazzling collection of fifteen short stories from Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments.
Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit and intellect.
The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after.
Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.
You may also enjoy...
-
The Heart Goes Last
- A Novel
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system.
-
-
Interesting
- By Sandy on 2019-08-15
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
My Evil Mother
- A Short Story
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Life is hard enough for a teenage girl in 1950s suburbia without having a mother who may—or may not—be a witch. A single mother at that. Sure, she fits in with her starched dresses, string of pearls, and floral aprons. Then there are the hushed and mystical consultations with neighborhood women in distress. The unsavory, mysterious plants in the flower beds. The divined warning to steer clear of a boyfriend whose fate is certainly doomed.
-
-
It’s okay except for the fantastical
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-09-03
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
Furies
- Stories of the Wicked, Wild and Untamed
- Written by: Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, Emma Donoghue, and others
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck, Charles Armstrong, Gabrielle Glaister, and others
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words for a certain kind of woman. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood. Words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, the boldest writers of our day take up these words and take up their pen, celebrating fifty years of Virago.
-
-
Wonderful, varied, funny, heartbreaking
- By Maria L. Lantin on 2023-07-15
Written by: Margaret Atwood, and others
-
Cut and Thirst
- A Short Story
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet every Thursday to sample fine cheeses, to reminisce about their former lives as professors, and lately, to muse about murder. Decades ago, a vicious cabal of male poets contrived—quite publicly and successfully—to undermine the writing career, confidence, and health of their dear friend Fern. Now, after Fern has taken a turn for the worse, her three old friends decide that it’s finally time to strike back—in secret, of course, since Fern is far too gentle to approve of a vendetta.
-
-
Pointless
- By Nilton C. Teixeira on 2024-05-18
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
Life Before Man
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Deborah Burgess, Libby Lennie, Geoff Bowes
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices - after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men.
-
-
Dark and boring
- By amazon customer on 2024-08-24
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
The Stone Diaries
- Written by: Carol Shields, Penelope Lively - introduction
- Narrated by: Deborah Drakeford
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
Written by: Carol Shields, and others
-
The Heart Goes Last
- A Novel
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system.
-
-
Interesting
- By Sandy on 2019-08-15
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
My Evil Mother
- A Short Story
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Life is hard enough for a teenage girl in 1950s suburbia without having a mother who may—or may not—be a witch. A single mother at that. Sure, she fits in with her starched dresses, string of pearls, and floral aprons. Then there are the hushed and mystical consultations with neighborhood women in distress. The unsavory, mysterious plants in the flower beds. The divined warning to steer clear of a boyfriend whose fate is certainly doomed.
-
-
It’s okay except for the fantastical
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-09-03
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
Furies
- Stories of the Wicked, Wild and Untamed
- Written by: Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, Emma Donoghue, and others
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck, Charles Armstrong, Gabrielle Glaister, and others
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words for a certain kind of woman. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood. Words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, the boldest writers of our day take up these words and take up their pen, celebrating fifty years of Virago.
-
-
Wonderful, varied, funny, heartbreaking
- By Maria L. Lantin on 2023-07-15
Written by: Margaret Atwood, and others
-
Cut and Thirst
- A Short Story
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet every Thursday to sample fine cheeses, to reminisce about their former lives as professors, and lately, to muse about murder. Decades ago, a vicious cabal of male poets contrived—quite publicly and successfully—to undermine the writing career, confidence, and health of their dear friend Fern. Now, after Fern has taken a turn for the worse, her three old friends decide that it’s finally time to strike back—in secret, of course, since Fern is far too gentle to approve of a vendetta.
-
-
Pointless
- By Nilton C. Teixeira on 2024-05-18
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
Life Before Man
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Deborah Burgess, Libby Lennie, Geoff Bowes
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices - after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men.
-
-
Dark and boring
- By amazon customer on 2024-08-24
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
The Stone Diaries
- Written by: Carol Shields, Penelope Lively - introduction
- Narrated by: Deborah Drakeford
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
Written by: Carol Shields, and others
-
The Secret of Chimneys
- Written by: Agatha Christie
- Narrated by: Jonathan Waters
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When James McGrath needed someone to take a memoir to a publisher and to return letters to the woman who wrote them, he chooses his friend Anthony Cade, who agrees to take on the two jobs. But on Anthony's first night in London, the letters are stolen from his hotel room. He soon finds himself embroiled in a web of intrigue, conspiracy, and secrets that leads all the way to the top levels of government.
Written by: Agatha Christie
-
Snow Road Station
- A Novel
- Written by: Elizabeth Hay
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Hay
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 2008, as snow falls without interruption, an actor in a Beckett play blanks on her lines. Fleeing the theatre, she beats a retreat into her past and arrives at Snow Road Station, a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario. The actor is Lulu Blake, in her sixties now, a sexy, seemingly unfooled woman well-versed in taking risks. Out of work, humiliated, she enters the last act of her life wondering what she can make of her diminished self.
-
-
FABULOUS!!!
- By PWL on 2024-11-29
Written by: Elizabeth Hay
-
Stone Mattress
- Nine Tales
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood, Rob Delaney, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. Vintage Atwood creativity, intelligence, and humor: think Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace.
-
-
Enjoyed every minute
- By Shannon S. on 2021-02-10
Written by: Margaret Atwood
-
Labyrinths
- Selected Stories & Other Writings
- Written by: Jorge Luis Borges
- Narrated by: Dominic Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labelled Borgesian.
Written by: Jorge Luis Borges
-
Life in the City of Dirty Water
- A Memoir of Healing
- Written by: Clayton Thomas-Muller
- Narrated by: Clayton Thomas-Muller
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There have been many Clayton Thomas-Mullers: The child who played with toy planes as an escape from domestic and sexual abuse, enduring the intergenerational trauma of Canada's residential school system; the angry youngster who defended himself with fists and sharp wit against racism and violence, at school and on the streets of Winnipeg and small-town British Columbia; the tough teenager who, at 17, managed a drug house run by members of his family, and slipped in and out of juvie, operating in a world of violence and pain.
-
-
Both insightful snd hopeful
- By Debra Ransom on 2024-10-09
Written by: Clayton Thomas-Muller
-
Medea
- A Novel
- Written by: Eilish Quin
- Narrated by: Gail Shalan
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the women of Greek mythology, the witch Medea may be the most despised. Known for the brutal act of killing her own children to exact vengeance on her deceitful husband, Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, Medea has carved out a singularly infamous niche in our histories.
Written by: Eilish Quin
-
The Astrology House
- A Novel
- Written by: Carinn Jade
- Narrated by: Amanda Dolan, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Gilli Messer, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margot needs a minute. She’s been working eighty-hour weeks as a newly minted partner at her law firm. She’s disconnected from her brother, the only family she has left. And she’s still not pregnant after years of trying. Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat promises rest, relaxation, and wisdom for Margot and her friends. With Instagram-worthy views and nightly astrology readings in an impeccably restored waterfront Victorian house, this getaway should be nothing but idyllic fun.
Written by: Carinn Jade
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- Written by: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
Beautifully read, but a slow story to unravel.
- By Denise on 2023-08-29
Written by: Ann Patchett
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- Written by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Brilliant narration of beautifully written story
- By Kareem on 2023-05-28
Written by: Barbara Kingsolver
-
La nuit des temps
- Written by: René Barjavel
- Narrated by: Benjamin Jungers
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dans les steppes glacées de l'Antarctique, le mythe des amants légendaires revisité par Barjavel. Un grand classique de la littérature, toujours en tête de liste des romans préférés des Français. Dans le grand silence blanc de l'Antarctique, les membres d'une mission des Expéditions polaires françaises s'activent à prélever des carottes de glace. L'épaisseur de la banquise atteint plus de 1 000 mètres, les couches les plus profondes remontant à 900 000 ans.
-
-
Une expérience extraordinaire
- By Momo on 2024-09-02
Written by: René Barjavel
-
Barney's Version
- Written by: Mordecai Richler
- Narrated by: Graham Abbey
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Barney Panofsky - Canadian expat, wily lover of women, writer, television producer, raconteur - is finally putting pen to paper so he can rebut the charges about him made in his rival’s autobiography. Whether it’s ranting about his bohemian misadventures during the 1950s in Paris, his tumultuous three marriages, or his successful trashy TV company, Totally Unnecessary Productions, he quickly proves that his memory may be slipping, but his bile isn’t.
-
-
No Thanks
- By Amazon Customer on 2020-05-17
Written by: Mordecai Richler
-
Fayne
- A Novel
- Written by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
- Narrated by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
- Length: 30 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery.
-
-
So rich in detail!
- By samONT on 2022-10-28
Written by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
What the critics say
“This is Atwood. This is our four-faced Janus, who’s got one face turned to the past, one to the present, one to the future and the fourth inside a spaceship, telling stories about eating horses. Long may she reign.” —New York Times
"Old Babes in the Wood is another Margaret Atwood triumph: incisive, insightful, hilarious and utterly readable." —The Globe and Mail
“Atwood is a literary writer who entirely sees the point of science fiction, and her speculative instincts are on show in several of the stories here.” —The Guardian
What listeners say about Old Babes in the Wood
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Victoria
- 2023-09-10
Authors should let actors read
The first half of this book was enjoyable. The last half was more cathartic for the author in her dealing with grief and aging. She is also not the best orator. Leave that to the professionals and stick to her very talented writing skills.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Steffi Dias
- 2024-06-19
Garbage
Boring and the story had no head nor tail. I had to stop listening and return the audible.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!