
The Summer Isles
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $20.72
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Steve Hodson
-
By:
-
Ian R. MacLeod
About this listen
Nominated for the John C Campbell Memorial Award. Sidewise Award for Alternate History. World Fantasy Award.
In this fine work of full-length fiction by award-winning author Ian R. MacLeod, a chilling alternate history unfolds.... An elderly English historian, swept along with the rest of his country by the march of history, sways between reminiscences of his life's true love and his efforts - in his own fumbling way - to change his nation's course.
In this tale, Britain has lost the First World War and turned to fascism. As a homosexual, the narrator suffers both the fear of repression and the loss of his lover to the fascist government, while the ordinary people of the rest of the country enjoy shiny modernity and, with it, briefly, the envy of other nations.
MacLeod's tale shows convincingly that no one individual or country is immune from totalitarianism, and the identity of his British dictator forms a twist that, both beguilingly and deceptively, never stops turning.
©2012 Ian R. MacLeod (P)2012 Audible LtdListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Distant Hours
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.
-
-
Right Mood At The Right Time
- By Simone on 11-13-12
By: Kate Morton
-
Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Atonement, three children lose their innocence, as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935, and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyperimaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. And as chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
-
-
An amazing book about complex human perception
- By Amazon Customer on 08-17-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
-
-
"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
Life Class
- By: Pat Barker
- Narrated by: Russell Boulter
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him.
-
-
In Love and War
- By Cariola on 07-28-09
By: Pat Barker
-
The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
-
-
Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
- By Moore Creative on 07-25-18
By: Iain Banks
-
The English German Girl
- By: Jake Wallis Simons
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler's fist, the Klein family are gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their 15-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a new life in England. Charged with the task of securing a safe passage for her family, she vows that she will not rest until they are safe. But as war breaks out and she loses contact with her parents, Rosa finds herself wondering if there are some vows that can't be kept....
-
-
must read
- By Donna on 01-31-12
-
The Distant Hours
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.
-
-
Right Mood At The Right Time
- By Simone on 11-13-12
By: Kate Morton
-
Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Atonement, three children lose their innocence, as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935, and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyperimaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. And as chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
-
-
An amazing book about complex human perception
- By Amazon Customer on 08-17-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
-
-
"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
Life Class
- By: Pat Barker
- Narrated by: Russell Boulter
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him.
-
-
In Love and War
- By Cariola on 07-28-09
By: Pat Barker
-
The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
-
-
Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
- By Moore Creative on 07-25-18
By: Iain Banks
-
The English German Girl
- By: Jake Wallis Simons
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler's fist, the Klein family are gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their 15-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a new life in England. Charged with the task of securing a safe passage for her family, she vows that she will not rest until they are safe. But as war breaks out and she loses contact with her parents, Rosa finds herself wondering if there are some vows that can't be kept....
-
-
must read
- By Donna on 01-31-12
-
Runaway
- By: Peter May
- Narrated by: Peter Forbes
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Glasgow, 1965. Headstrong teenager Jack Mackay cannot allow for even the possibility of a life of predictability and routine. The 17-year-old has just one destination on his mind - London - and successfully convinces his four friends and fellow bandmates to join him in abandoning their homes to pursue a goal of musical stardom.
-
-
Great story of adventures - past and present
- By Karen on 06-02-16
By: Peter May
-
The Lost Letters
- By: Sarah Mitchell
- Narrated by: Tara Ward
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Martha’s beloved father dies, he leaves her two things: a mysterious stash of letters to an English woman named "Catkins" and directions to a beach hut in the English seaside town of Wells-Next-the-Sea. Martha is at a painful crossroads in her own life and seizes this chance for a trip to England - to discover more about her family’s past and the identity of her father’s secret correspondent.
-
-
Intriguing story.
- By LJStevie on 03-19-19
By: Sarah Mitchell
-
Letters to the Lost
- By: Iona Grey
- Narrated by: Avita Jay
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late on a frozen February evening, a young woman is running through the streets of London. Having fled from her abusive boyfriend and with nowhere to go, Jess stumbles onto a forgotten lane where a small, clearly unlived in old house offers her best chance of shelter for the night. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives and when she can't help but open it, she finds herself drawn inexorably into the story of two lovers from another time.
-
-
Reading Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey is Time Well Spent
- By Donna on 11-12-15
By: Iona Grey
-
TransAtlantic
- A Novel
- By: Colum McCann
- Narrated by: Geraldine Hughes
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann thrilled readers with a marvelous high-wire act of fiction that The New York Times Book Review called "an emotional tour de force". Now McCann demonstrates once again why he is one of the most acclaimed and essential authors of his generation with a soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined.
-
-
Too breathtaking to read just once...
- By Annie M. on 06-18-13
By: Colum McCann
-
Waiting for Sunrise
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Robert Ian MacKenzie
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment of a sexual nature, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is stunned, and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape - with the help of two mysterious British diplomats - saves him from trial. But the frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that steadily dismantles Lysander's life as he knows it.
-
-
No need to wait.
- By Thomas D Kennedy on 07-25-12
By: William Boyd
-
Jerusalem
- By: Alan Moore
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 60 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alan Moore channels both the ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert Einstein through the hardscrabble streets and alleys of his hometown of Northampton, UK. In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative, among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts, a different kind of human time is happening.
-
-
Neither Engaging nor Satisfying
- By Asha Ember on 12-20-16
By: Alan Moore
-
The Oceans Between Us
- By: Gill Thompson
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by extraordinary true events, this remarkable debut novel reveals the enduring power of love and the strength of the human spirit in one woman's quest to find her son, and a little boy's dream to be found.
-
-
so much sadness and tragedy
- By LaLa on 08-25-20
By: Gill Thompson
-
The Untouchable
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: Bill Wallis
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After the announcement in the Commons, the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his photograph is all over the papers. His disgrace is public, his position as curator of the Queen’s pictures terminated… Maskell writes his own testament, in an act not unlike the restoration of one of his beloved pictures, in order for the process of verification and attribution to begin.
-
-
Brilliant writer writes the most boring spy story
- By David on 05-15-12
By: John Banville
-
Ancient Light
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is there any difference between memory and invention? That is the question that fuels this stunning novel, written with the depth of character, the clarifying lyricism, and the heart-wrenching humor that have marked all of John Banville's extraordinary works. And it is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave as he plumbs the memories of his first - and perhaps only - love (he, just 15, the woman more than twice his age, the mother of his best friend; the situation impossible, thrilling, devouring, and finally devastating).
-
-
Gorgeous!
- By victoria on 03-27-13
By: John Banville
-
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
Black Out
- An Inspector Troy Novel
- By: John Lawton
- Narrated by: Lewis Hancock
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
London, 1944. While the Luftwaffe makes its final assault on the already battered British capital, Londoners rush through the streets, seeking underground shelter in the midst of the city's blackout. When the panic subsides, other things begin to surface along with London's war-worn citizens. A severed arm is discovered by a group of children playing at an East End bomb site, and when Scotland Yard's Detective Sergeant Frederick Troy arrives at the scene, it becomes apparent that the dismembered body is not the work of a V-1 rocket.
-
-
Terrible
- By Amazon Customer on 03-13-18
By: John Lawton
-
Cthulhu Lives!
- An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft
- By: Salome Jones
- Narrated by: Leeman Kessler, Alasdair Stuart
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This volume brings together 17 masterful tales of cosmic horror inspired by Lovecraft's work. In his fiction, humanity is a tiny, accidental drop of light and life in the endless darkness of an uncaring universe a darkness populated by vast, utterly alien horrors. Our continued survival relies upon our utter obscurity, something that every fresh scientific wonder threatens to shatter.
-
-
Excellent
- By Amazon Customer on 03-21-22
By: Salome Jones
What listeners say about The Summer Isles
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Long Island Reader
- 02-12-15
Read and listen to this book!
I can't believe this book has received so little attention on Amazon and Audible. As of this writing, there are a total of only six reviews on Amazon.
Other reviewers have summarized the book and I don't need to repeat their comments.
Suffice it say that the writing is beautiful. The narration fits the story so perfectly I couldn't imagine it being done any better.. Between the two, I've never seen Amazon's Kindle 'Immersion Reading" concept work any better.
The Summer Isles deserves more exposure.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dave Cole
- 02-25-12
5??? Story, With Perfect Narration & One Caveat.
The caveat first: the protagonist of this magnificent alternate history--set in a world where England rather than Germany suffered humiliating defeat in The Great War and subsequently descends into fascism--is a homosexual. There is some description of sexual acts between two men in this book--and also of absent longing of one man for another. This is not the focus of the book--and the protagonists homosexuality really serves more than anything to emphasize his alienation in a fascist state, but threre it is. if you are very uncomfortable with/have no desire to read about/cannot accept the idea of 'the gays' you should read no further, but mark this review as helpful and move on to find a more suitable book.
That said, I am so glad that this was not enough to scare me off. Because it is without exaggeration that i say that this is possibly the most literary entry in to the genre of mid-century alternate history since Dick's 'Man in High Castle'. I love this genre and i have read all of them that i can find, and this is by far the best that I have read recently. Is it on par with orwell? probably not. But it is on par with 'Man in High Castle' and 'American Pastoral'. Blows out of the water anything that the pulp authors in the genre-turtledove and the rest--have ever written. (And i love and read those as well.)
What truly made this book a treat though was the narration. Steve Hodsons slow British accent was so perfectly suited to the story that it felt more like listening to the protagonist speak than like being read a book. The narration is so perfect, in fact, that i am almost hesitant to suggest the print book to anyone because i don't know how much my sense of the quality of the writing comes from the flawlessness of the narration.
Hope this helps.
Dave
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful