Don’t Be a Stranger

If you listen in pieces — commute, chores, late night — Don’t Be a Stranger by Susan Minot keeps its place in this browser.

A mesmerizing new novel from the author of the story of a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel’s beguiling good looks and quiet intensity instantly seduce her. Despite the gulf between their ages and experience the physical chemistry between them is overpowering, and over the heady weeks and months that follow Ivy finds her life bifurcated by his. On the surface she is a responsible mother, managing the demands of friends, an ex-husband, home; but emotionally, psychologically, sexually, she is consumed by desire and increasingly alive only in the stolen moments-out-of-time, with Ansel in her bed. In spellbinding prose

Press play on Audiobook Flow whenever you have a stretch of time. The chapter list stays on this page.