The Glass Ocean

A Novel

By: Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White

Narrated by: Vanessa Johansson, Saskia Maarleveld, Brittany Pressley

Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

From the New York Times best-selling authors of The Forgotten Room comes a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century - two deep in the past, one in the present - to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.

May 2013

Her finances are in dire straits, and best-selling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history.

Sarah embarks on an ambitious journey to England to enlist the help of John Langford, a recently disgraced member of parliament whose family archives might contain the only key to the long-ago catastrophe....

April 1915

Southern belle Caroline Telfair Hochstetter’s marriage is in crisis. Her formerly attentive industrialist husband, Gilbert, has become remote, preoccupied with business...and something else on which she can’t quite put a finger. She’s hoping a trip to London in Lusitania’s lavish first-class accommodations will help them reconnect - but she can’t ignore the spark she feels for her old friend, Robert Langford, who turns out to be on the same voyage. Feeling restless and longing for a different existence, Caroline is determined to stop being a bystander and take charge of her own life....

Tessa Fairweather is traveling second-class on the Lusitania, returning home to Devon. Or at least, that’s her story. Tessa has never left the US, and her English accent is a hasty fake. She’s really Tennessee Schaff, the daughter of a roving con man, and she can steal and forge just about anything. But she’s had enough. Her partner has promised that if they can pull off this one last heist aboard the Lusitania, they’ll finally leave the game behind. Tess desperately wants to believe that, but Tess has the uneasy feeling there’s something about this job that isn’t as it seems....

As the Lusitania steams toward its fate, three women work against time to unravel a plot that will change the course of their own lives...and history itself.

©2018 Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Harley House Books, LLC (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

a wonderful historical tale

one on the best collaborations done by these 3 women. A wonderfully told tale woven between history and the present.

Wished it had ended differently

The characters who ended up together didn't seem like they really belonged together. SPOILER. It's hard to believe that a man who has loved a woman passionately for 10 years would then just forget about her and propose to someone he hardly knew.

Love this book!

Now that I have finished, I want to start it again. I look forward to listening to Audibles recommendation next.

Great read!

I’m surprised at how mean and snobby some of these comments are! I’ve been reading Beatriz Williams for some time now and this is the first collaboration I’ve read. It did not disappoint. Is some of the story far fetched…sure. But it’s a historical fiction romance, it’s part of why we love them.
The narrators were amazing. They even sounded great at 1.2x speed. I don’t know why people were bashing them-so rude!

Enchanting

I couldn’t stop listening to this story! The characters and performance of them were enchanting the mystery the relationships. All inner twined around the real story of the ship Lusitania.

Devastating Beautiful

Amidst a tremendous historical tragedy the author takes us to places of the heart. Well done :)

Great Book

I loved everything about it. The story is intriguing, the characters very interesting and real and the way it all fits together. The reader is excellent.

Great fluid plot

Wow great book. The plot twist at the end was not seen coming.
I liked the authentic way the characters interact with each other.

The narrators male voice is good too.

Beautiful story

I love stories that time travel between the past and the present. They give you insight to all the characters thoughts.

Loved the story line

I personally did not like Sara’s narrator and it seem to me that the audio was down separately in a separate studio because the quality of the sound was not as good. Having said that the story was great and it still pulled me in.