
Good Evening, Mrs. Craven
The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $12.09
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lucy Scott
About this listen
Good Evening, Mrs Craven brings together twenty-one of Mollie Panter-Downes’ short stories. Originally published in The New Yorker between 1939 and 1944, these stories have been reprinted and presented as a collection by Persephone Books. This audio edition is read by Lucy Scott.
These stories explore almost every aspect of English domestic life during the Second World War: separation, fear, and obsessions with food, sewing parties, evacuees’ journeys, and the camaraderie of the Blitz. Above all, Panter-Downes portrays the changes and social revolutions which took place during wartime.
Good Evening, Mrs Craven is part of the Persephone Audiobook Collection, a series of forgotten classics including neglected fiction and non-fiction by women writers. This edition includes a preface by author Gregory LeStage.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Someone at a Distance
- By: Dorothy Whipple
- Narrated by: Susan Wooldridge
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ellen and Avery North share a stable and secure life. Everything is well looked after: their teenage children, their garden, and Avery’s elderly mother who lives nearby. In time, old Mrs North decides she is in need of a live-in companion, and Louise Lanier arrives after responding to a newspaper advert. When Louise sets out to seduce Avery for the fun of it, her behaviour threatens to destroy Ellen and Avery’s peaceful life together.
-
-
Great read!
- By L. Burney on 02-22-25
By: Dorothy Whipple
-
They Were Sisters
- By: Dorothy Whipple
- Narrated by: Sara Poyzer
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet three women with contrasting partners: Lucy's husband is her beloved companion; Vera's husband bores her and she turns elsewhere; and Charlotte's husband is a horrifying bully who turns a high-spirited naive young girl into a deeply unhappy woman. This is the story of how those marriages shape the sister’s lives, the consequences of their decisions, and the sisterly love that hopes to save them from tragedy.
-
-
vanilla facade, a world of wonder inside
- By Yasmin on 04-29-24
By: Dorothy Whipple
-
High Wages
- By: Dorothy Whipple, Jane Brocket - foreword
- Narrated by: Sara Poyzer
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane Carter sees an advertisement for a live-in shop assistant and jumps at the chance to leave her old life behind. After Chadwick the draper takes her on, Jane learns all there is to know about fabrics and dressmaking. She proves a talented saleswoman and befriends Maggie and Lily, the other employees. The girls struggle under exploitative conditions: meagre pay; tiny portions of food; the boss cheating them out of commissions. When the young man Maggie is seeing falls in love with Jane, a bitter falling-out results in Maggie threatening to leave Chadwick’s.
By: Dorothy Whipple, and others
-
The Lark
- By: E. Nesbit
- Narrated by: Anne Hancock
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Orphaned cousins Jane and Lucilla, both 19, receive the exciting news that their guardian is at last allowing them to leave boarding school. But their rosy future is thwarted when they find he has made some bad investments and fled, leaving them with a cottage in the English countryside and a modest bank account.
-
-
It has that wonderful charm of the tales of old...
- By Lidia Chymkowska on 10-03-18
By: E. Nesbit
-
The Diary of a Provincial Lady
- By: E. M. Delafield
- Narrated by: Georgina Sutton
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'Lady B. stays to tea. (Mem.: Bread-and-butter too thick. Speak to Ethel.) We talk some more about bulbs, the Dutch School of Painting, our Vicar's wife, sciatica, and All Quiet on the Western Front. (Query: is it possible to cultivate the art of conversation when living in the country all the year round?)' If the question suggests a qualified answer, there is no doubt that the art of diary writing is alive and well and very, very funny in Devonshire in the 1920s. At least in the hands of E. M. Delafield.
-
-
Fantastic Surprise!
- By Chelsea Vyse on 07-13-18
By: E. M. Delafield
-
The Charity Shop Detective Agency
- The Charity Shop Detective Agency Mysteries, Book 1
- By: Peter Boland
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fiona, Sue, and Daisy, three retired ladies who volunteer at the local charity shop, Dogs Need Nice Homes, can’t believe their favorite customer is dead. Eighty-six-year-old Sarah Brown was found murdered in her hallway by her delivery man, a domino clutched in her hand—with a name scratched on it. When another person is found dead with a domino in their hand, and with the police making no progress, the ladies will need to help unmask a serial killer. At least they have Fiona’s scruffy-haired terrier cross to assist them.
-
-
Very easy listen
- By Madison Lindley on 01-11-24
By: Peter Boland
-
Someone at a Distance
- By: Dorothy Whipple
- Narrated by: Susan Wooldridge
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ellen and Avery North share a stable and secure life. Everything is well looked after: their teenage children, their garden, and Avery’s elderly mother who lives nearby. In time, old Mrs North decides she is in need of a live-in companion, and Louise Lanier arrives after responding to a newspaper advert. When Louise sets out to seduce Avery for the fun of it, her behaviour threatens to destroy Ellen and Avery’s peaceful life together.
-
-
Great read!
- By L. Burney on 02-22-25
By: Dorothy Whipple
-
They Were Sisters
- By: Dorothy Whipple
- Narrated by: Sara Poyzer
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet three women with contrasting partners: Lucy's husband is her beloved companion; Vera's husband bores her and she turns elsewhere; and Charlotte's husband is a horrifying bully who turns a high-spirited naive young girl into a deeply unhappy woman. This is the story of how those marriages shape the sister’s lives, the consequences of their decisions, and the sisterly love that hopes to save them from tragedy.
-
-
vanilla facade, a world of wonder inside
- By Yasmin on 04-29-24
By: Dorothy Whipple
-
High Wages
- By: Dorothy Whipple, Jane Brocket - foreword
- Narrated by: Sara Poyzer
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane Carter sees an advertisement for a live-in shop assistant and jumps at the chance to leave her old life behind. After Chadwick the draper takes her on, Jane learns all there is to know about fabrics and dressmaking. She proves a talented saleswoman and befriends Maggie and Lily, the other employees. The girls struggle under exploitative conditions: meagre pay; tiny portions of food; the boss cheating them out of commissions. When the young man Maggie is seeing falls in love with Jane, a bitter falling-out results in Maggie threatening to leave Chadwick’s.
By: Dorothy Whipple, and others
-
The Lark
- By: E. Nesbit
- Narrated by: Anne Hancock
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Orphaned cousins Jane and Lucilla, both 19, receive the exciting news that their guardian is at last allowing them to leave boarding school. But their rosy future is thwarted when they find he has made some bad investments and fled, leaving them with a cottage in the English countryside and a modest bank account.
-
-
It has that wonderful charm of the tales of old...
- By Lidia Chymkowska on 10-03-18
By: E. Nesbit
-
The Diary of a Provincial Lady
- By: E. M. Delafield
- Narrated by: Georgina Sutton
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'Lady B. stays to tea. (Mem.: Bread-and-butter too thick. Speak to Ethel.) We talk some more about bulbs, the Dutch School of Painting, our Vicar's wife, sciatica, and All Quiet on the Western Front. (Query: is it possible to cultivate the art of conversation when living in the country all the year round?)' If the question suggests a qualified answer, there is no doubt that the art of diary writing is alive and well and very, very funny in Devonshire in the 1920s. At least in the hands of E. M. Delafield.
-
-
Fantastic Surprise!
- By Chelsea Vyse on 07-13-18
By: E. M. Delafield
-
The Charity Shop Detective Agency
- The Charity Shop Detective Agency Mysteries, Book 1
- By: Peter Boland
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fiona, Sue, and Daisy, three retired ladies who volunteer at the local charity shop, Dogs Need Nice Homes, can’t believe their favorite customer is dead. Eighty-six-year-old Sarah Brown was found murdered in her hallway by her delivery man, a domino clutched in her hand—with a name scratched on it. When another person is found dead with a domino in their hand, and with the police making no progress, the ladies will need to help unmask a serial killer. At least they have Fiona’s scruffy-haired terrier cross to assist them.
-
-
Very easy listen
- By Madison Lindley on 01-11-24
By: Peter Boland