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Airs Above the Ground
- Author
- Mary Stewart
- Narrator
- Antonia Whillans
- Publisher
- Hodder & Stoughton
- Publish Date
- 9 May 2019
- Run Time
- 9 hours 14 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
What to expect
Vanessa March's husband Lewis is meant to be on a business trip in Stockholm - so why does he briefly appear in newsreel footage of a fire at a circus in Vienna, with his arm around another woman? Vanessa flies to Austria to find her husband, inadvertently becoming involved in a mystery that spans three countries... and the famous dancing stallions of the Spanish Riding School.
The moonlight flooded the meadow, blanching all colours to its own ghostly silver. The pines were very black. As the stallion rose in the last magnificent rear of the levande, the moonlight poured over him bleaching his hide so that for perhaps five or six seconds he was no longer an old broken-down piebald, but a haute école stallion of the oldest line in Europe.
'Mary Stewart is magic' New York Times
'From opening to finale, this zestful romantic adventure grips, amuses, frightens and delights' Sunday Telegraph
'One of the great British storytellers of the 20th century' Independent
(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Critics Review
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From opening to finale, this zestful romantic adventure grips, amuses, frightens and delights
Sunday Telegraph
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Mary Stewart is magic
New York Times
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She set the bench mark for pace, suspense and romance - with a great dollop of escapism as the icing
Elizabeth Buchan
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A comfortable chair and a Mary Stewart: total heaven. I'd rather read her than most other authors.
Harriet Evans
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The stylish, educated novels of Mary Stewart . . . arguably inspired the deluge of bestselling romantic fiction that has flooded the market in recent decades.
Guardian
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Mary Stewart sprinkled intelligence around like stardust . . . She built the bridge between classic literature and modern popular fiction. She did it first and she did it best
Herald
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A writer of considerable skill . . . [with an] intuitive feel for the past and its re-creation in vivid, poetic detail
Telegraph
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A wonderful wordsmith . . . Stewart was among the first authors to seamlessly integrate a mystery and a romance thus allowing the two to come alive and complement each other.
Scotsman
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 4.0
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5.0 4.0
So glad I revisited this book in audio form - it's been decades since I read it and it has reminded me how much I learned about other places and cultures from Stewart's books. In this case, the Spanish riding school in Vienna, and cog railways 😃 The narrator's voice is pleasant and rendered all of the characters well, but I deducted a star for the mispronunciation of several words. It wasn't enough to ruin the rendition, more cause a raised eyebrow, but I do wish that audiobook producers would take care to check their narrators' work in order to avoid this type of basic error.
pigmint 2026-08-10
Details
- Author
- Mary Stewart
- Narrator
- Antonia Whillans
- Duration
- 9 hours 14 minutes
- Release Date
- 9 May 2019
- ISBN
- 9781529378863
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Hodder & Stoughton
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Crime and / or mystery fiction
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 4.0(1 review)
Synopsis
The original writer of romantic suspense, Mary Stewart leads her readers on a thrilling journey across mid-century Europe in this tale of adventure and deception, sure to be loved by fans of Agatha Christie and Barbara Pym.Vanessa March's husband Lewis is meant to be on a business trip in Stockholm - so why does he briefly appear in newsreel footage of a fire at a circus in Vienna, with his arm around another woman? Vanessa flies to Austria to find her husband, inadvertently becoming involved in a mystery that spans three countries... and the famous dancing stallions of the Spanish Riding School.The moonlight flooded the meadow, blanching all colours to its own ghostly silver. The pines were very black. As the stallion rose in the last magnificent rear of the levande, the moonlight poured over him bleaching his hide so that for perhaps five or six seconds he was no longer an old broken-down piebald, but a haute école stallion of the oldest line in Europe.'Mary Stewart is magic' New York Times'From opening to finale, this zestful romantic adventure grips, amuses, frightens and delights' Sunday Telegraph'One of the great British storytellers of the 20th century' Independent(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
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