The Quiet: In A Silenced World, What Would You Do To Keep Your Child Safe?

Barnaby Martin

May 2025 · Macmillan · Narrated by Annabel Scholey

About this audiobook

Read by Annabel Scholey, known for her roles in the BAFTA-winning The Sixth Commandment, The Split, and Rivals.

This audiobook is accompanied in part by a spine-tingling yet euphoric soundscape, composed by the author, Barnaby Martin, and also includes a fascinating audio-exclusive Q&A between himself and Annabel.

‘Riveting. Martin weaves an inspired premise into an engrossing and wholly original adventure.’ – Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One

'An intellectually compelling, emotional and timely read. Martin has taken a motif of dystopian writing and films – a single parent and child – and has reworked it within a fresh landscape. The Quiet is a feat of writing that foregrounds the value of kindness and communication in a world bent on segregation and misinformation.' – The Bookseller

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A mother's love can be deafening . . .

Isaac is Hannah’s entire world. She knows that her son is gifted, and that those gifts make him vulnerable. To keep him safe, she spends every waking moment by his side. If she lets her guard down, lets him out of her sight, lets him show what he’s capable of, he will be taken from her.

When the Soundfield arrived twenty years ago, the world changed with it. Now, people are forced to live at night due to the deadly heat of the day, food and water are scarce, and everyday life is punctuated by the constant and disconcerting hum from the Field. A brilliant scientist, Hannah spent her early career working on the enigma of the Soundfield, looking for answers; now, resigned, she has focussed all her energies on keeping Isaac living, not just alive.

To do so, she will have to lie to the people she knows and hope she can trust the ones she doesn't. Because the only thing more dangerous than her lies, is the truth of what she has done.

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'As fascinating as it was terrifying.' – Holly Seddon, author of The Woman on the Bridge

''The Quiet took my breath away. gripping, fiercely intelligent and quietly heartbreaking. I will think of Isaac for a long time to come' – Emma Kavanagh, author of To Catch A Killer

'A clever and unique dystopian premise, this was spare and tense, gripping and heartbreaking' – Louise Swanson, author of End of Story

About the author

Barnaby Martin is a multi-talented storyteller and creator. Besides his writing, he is an award-winning and self-taught composer, video essayist and teacher. His music has been performed widely in the UK and internationally by groups including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of Opera North and Westminster Cathedral Choir. His YouTube channel, Listening In, which he began in 2019 and for which he makes videos that explore the cross-section between pop culture and classical music, has garnered over 200,000 subscribers and 10 million views. He studied natural sciences at Cambridge and now teaches in London, where he lives with his husband.