Sleepbound Nights (free)

The Toast Maker — Episode 22
By Eliza Hartley

Tonight's reading is free. Over 500 more — and every new one first — are on Sleepbound Premium. Free for 7 days, cancel any time.
→ Supercast: sleepboundstudios.supercast.com
→ Patreon: patreon.com/c/SleepBound

Our other two shows, if tonight's isn't quite what you were after:
→ Sleepbound — classic literature read slowly enough to fall asleep to: Apple Podcasts
→ Sleepbound Soundscapes — ambient sleep music, no narration: Apple Podcasts

A cake under a tea towel was, she thought, one of the most comforting objects in domestic life. It said: there is a cake. The cake is here. The cake will be eaten.
The snow is still falling on the morning of the shortest day. Iris is putting on lipstick for Tom's mother. Tom is carrying the cake.

Tonight, they walk Mary's chocolate cake through the village to Millfield Road — where Margaret has swept the path twice, the navy apron is on, and a plate that has been waiting ninety years is finally ready to receive it.

Mr Pritchard is already at the table. The beef is better than the one at Tom's twenty-first. And before the cake is cut, Tom says something about Mary.

Thanks for keeping this open for all of us. Sweet dreams.

— Ian & Alex

Includes mentions of: Food, Weather, Mention of Loss, Animals, Beverages.

What is Sleepbound Nights (free)?

Original bedtime stories for grown-ups — cosy serial fiction, written and narrated by us, slow enough to fall asleep to.

Quiet villages and kitchen tables: a toast maker on a Sunday, a bookshop cat who won't settle, a family farm in 1953, a garden almanac kept through the year. Low stakes on purpose. Nothing bad happens. That's deliberate.

Each episode is a whole evening — four hours or so — so you can put it on, settle in, and not be woken by the end of it.

Every series has its own writer: Eliza Hartley writes The Toast Maker, Margery Cole writes Green Hollow, Cecily Ash keeps the Elderwick Almanac.

More of it, ad-free, with new members-only episodes every week:

→ Supercast — all three Sleepbound shows in one app. Free for 7 days, cancel any time:
https://sleepboundstudios.supercast.com
→ Patreon — the same readings, plus the community:
https://www.patreon.com/c/SleepBound

Just me and Ian and the writers. Recorded gently, for sleep.