Jenny Blackhurst Audiobooks

The first novel arrived because of a baby. Jenny Blackhurst wrote How I Lost You after the birth of her son in 2011, and on publication in 2014 it took a silver Nielsen award, went to number one on Kindle in the UK and became a Spiegel bestseller in Germany. That is a considerable amount to happen to a debut.

She was born in Shropshire and still lives there with her husband, two boys and two beagles, a pleasingly ordinary backdrop for a writer whose real subject is the damage families do to one another. Before I Let You In, The Foster Child, The Night She Died and The Perfect Guests followed, each built on the same instinct: take a woman who is certain of something, then remove the ground from under her.

She also writes locked-room mysteries as J. L. Blackhurst, beginning with Three Card Murder, in a distinctly lighter register.

The title to reach for first is The Summer Girl, comfortably the most reviewed Blackhurst recording here, with hundreds of listeners behind its score. Laura Aikman narrates, and at just under eight hours it is a properly compact thriller, the sort you can finish across a couple of commutes and one long walk.

Two more are on their way. The Girl Who Left is read by Charlotte Worthing and The Hiking Trip by Sara Poyzer, both running comfortably over eight hours and both trading in the same currency: an ordinary situation that turns out to have been rigged from the start.

Blackhurst is reliable company for anyone who reads Clare Mackintosh or Erin Kelly. Begin with The Summer Girl, then see what else has arrived below.