The Indie Next List
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores!
Start gifting
Bookseller pick
Send as gift
Add to Wish List
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start gifting
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayTell Me Everything: Oprah's Book Club
A Novel
Narrator
Kimberly Farr
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn more
Length
10 hours 58 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“With the profundity of Middlemarch and the simplicity of The Catcher in the Rye, Tell Me Everything is a meditation on loss, loneliness, and love. Strout’s restrained tone and sympathetic characterization captivate. I laughed, I cried, I held my breath.”
— Colleen • Read Between The Lynes
Bookseller recommendation
“I just finished this book, and I feel rejuvenated! That’s exactly what Elizabeth Strout’s writing does to me, and she’s done it once again! This is a story of ordinary lives told in an extraordinary way. Strout weaves into the story characters from her other books, (Olive Kitterich, Lucy Barton, Bob Burgess, William) who talk together about every topic under the sun: fears, loneliness, childhood traumas, marriage, adult children, vulnerabilities, aging, grief. It may appear that the story seems to ramble on, but the reader soon discovers that the characters are discussing their simple, unrecorded lives. In essence, the meaning of life. Although it’s a bonus to know these characters from other Strout novels, this book can be read as a stand-alone. But then, I guarantee you’ll want to read her other titles!”
— Virgie • Off the Beaten Path
Bookseller recommendation
“The book is about life and love and the wonderful characters Elizabeth Strout has written about come together to tell us about life. It is just about life and love. All the different kinds of love. And it is wonderful. ”
— Mollie • HearthFire Books
Bookseller recommendation
“I’ve just spent the last few days observing a grand reunion in this gorgeous book! All my old friends showed up: 90-year-old Olive, Lucy Barton, the Burgess brothers, even Amy and Isabel! Strout probes human nature and the many meanings of love.”
— Carol Katsoulis • Anderson's Bookshop
Bookseller recommendation
“Every Elizabeth Strout book introduces to characters I love. When she reintroduced many of those characters again in Tell Me Everything I welcomed them into my world - and listened as Strout seamlessly allowed them to tell stories of amazing and resilient people. Or help re-frame another's story for the best outcome. She notes that memory is tricky, but there is nothing tricky in knowing I will remember this novel for a very long time. ”
— Sarah • Watermark Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Elizabeth Strout's fictional characters - Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, and Bob Burgess, among others - are my friends for life. They inhabit my dreams occasionally, remind me that we all have childhood wounds that impact our adulthood, and always show me that good writing is my lifeline to literature and life. It's wonderful to catch up with old friends and find they have changed and see the world differently than the last time I visited with them. They tell their stories to one another and grapple with the 'big' questions of love, loneliness, loss, children, and marriage, learning to listen attentively and carefully to one another. A guide to a well-lived life as far as I'm concerned. ”
— Gayle • Changing Hands
Bookseller recommendation
“I’ve just spent the last few days observing a grand reunion in this gorgeous book! All my old friends showed up: 90-year-old Olive, Lucy Barton, the Burgess brothers, even Amy and Isabel! Strout probes human nature and the many meanings of love.”
— Carol • Anderson's Bookshop
Bookseller recommendation
“Delightful to read whether or not you're already a fan on Strout's fabulous cast of sympathetic characters. ”
— Mary • Newtonville Books
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a “stunner” (People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.
“Tell Me Everything hits like a bucolic fable. . . . A novel of moods, how they govern our personal lives and public spaces, reflected in Strout’s shimmering technique.”—The Washington Post
A TIME AND NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”
Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.
Featured in these playlists...
Reviews
“A generous, compassionate novel about the human need for connection, understanding and love, and the damage that occurs when those things are denied.”—San Francisco Chronicle“A rich tapestry, intricately wrought yet effortlessly realized, both suspenseful and meditative . . . Suffering and the enduring of it, the human impulse to solve and resolve confronting the fundamental unknowability of others and life’s essential mystery, finding hope, love, and connection in improbable places: Strout’s perpetual preoccupations are here explored with clear sighted rigor, emotional generosity, and bighearted joy.”—The Boston Globe
“[Strout’s] books are really about exploring characters so rich that they reveal more of themselves in book after book after book.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“No need to have read Strout’s other work to fall in love with this stand-alone story that explores the quiet impact we have on each other every day.”—Real Simple
“Strout covers the ghosts of marriages and the indignity of old age with her usual thoughtfulness.”—Vulture
“This book may be the epitome of literary fun . . . Once again, Strout has managed to compress key histories from her earlier books into a few telling sentences, a miracle of distillation that opens this novel, and the Strout ecosystem, to new and old readers alike.”—Portland Press-Herald
“Quietly wonderful and wise.”—AAR
“Rejoice, Strout fans . . . the author concerns herself and her characters with the art of narrative . . . a reminder that our mistakes make up our most interesting tales.”—Los Angeles Times
“Life, thank goodness, goes on in Strout’s remarkably-crafted world.”—Town and Country
“Strout weaves a gossamer-light web of a community’s hopes and setbacks.”—The Guardian
“Strout superfans will be thrilled to see the prickly protagonist of the author’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge . . . finally cross paths with the tender heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton and Lucy by the Sea. But if you’ve never cracked the spine of a Strout novel before, don’t sweat it—you’ll feel like a Crosby, Maine, local by the end of the first chapter.”—Oprah Daily
“Another deeply human and vibrant portrait of relationships, Tell Me Everything will bring the cozy and comforting story that fans have come to expect.”—She Reads
“With tenderness, honesty, intimacy, and compassion, Strout uses her cunning powers of observation to draw readers beyond the mundane to the miraculous complexities where true friendship lies. . . . An absolute must-have.”—Booklist, starred review
“The narrative threads make for dishy small-town drama, but even more satisfying are the insights Strout weaves into the dialogue. Longtime fans and newcomers alike will relish this.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! 
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks