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The Ivy Tree

The utterly escapist and gripping mystery and suspense novel from the Queen of Romantic Mystery

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About this listen

 Mary Stewart, one of the great British storytellers of the 20th century, transports listeners to rural Northumberland for this tale of romance, ambition, and deceit - a perfect fit for fans of Agatha Christie and Barbara Pym.

Whitescar is a beautiful old house and farm situated in Roman Wall country. It will make a rich inheritance for its heirs, but in order to secure it, they enlist the help of a young woman named Mary who bears remarkable resemblance to missing Whitescar heiress, Annabel Winslow. Their deception will spark a powder-keg of ambition, obsession and long-dead love.

The ivy had reached for the tree and only the tree's upper branches managed to thrust the young gold leaves of early summer through the strangling curtain. Eventually the ivy would kill it . . .


'There are few to equal Mary Stewart' Daily Telegraph

'Mary Stewart is magic.' New York Times

'One of the great British storytellers of the 20th century' Independent

'The Ivy Tree has the ideal thriller blend of plot, suspense, character drawing and good writing' Daily Express

(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©1961 Mary Stewart Classics Cosy Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery Romance Romantic Suspense Suspense
All stars
Most relevant
I was delighted to find Mary Stewart on Audible and am very greedily making my way through them starting with The Ivy Tree as one of my favourites. I agree with some other reviewers that the narration was not perfect but after the first few minutes I really didn’t care and honestly it wasn’t that bad anyway.

Loved it!

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A classic of its time, and still worth a listen. The narrator’s drawl was much too slow for me, and after the first chapter I played it through at the 1.2 speed, which made it more enjoyable.

Classic Mary Stewart

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Great story but eebygum ?cod Yorkshire? for the Northumbrian 'yokels' and a Canadian accented protagonist supposedly Northumbrian but can't pronounce Newcastle, scone or hawthorn...Just terrible

0* for terrible accents

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This is one of my favourite books my only criticism is that many words are mispronounced.

Love finds a way

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Oh dear what a pity that such a good story is marred by poor pronunciation of certain ‘Northumbrian’ words/place names. If ‘Annabel’ had turned up and talked about ‘BellingHam’ and referred to the the neighbour as ‘FenWick’ there would have been no story as she would have been instantly ‘outed’. ‘Annabel’ would have known without being told that the village is pronounced as ‘BellingJM’ and the neighbour’s name as ‘FeNik’. So an otherwise good reading is marred by lack of attention to detail and poor basic research.

Great story but .......

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