Sleepbound Nights (free)

The Toast Maker — Episode 23
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

Tonight, the village WhatsApp has been awake since before breakfast — the Christmas lights competition is two days out, Mrs Henderson is chairing, and a seven-foot inflatable Santa is under formal dispute. Tom ties his boots and slips out the back before any of it can find him. He's heading to his father's bench in the Back Lane workshop with a cherry off-cut, a 1979 mitre box, and the wedding invitation he promised to frame before Christmas Day. We left them at the end of the longest night — Iris's words in the dark, and Tom's answer. This episode sits in the morning after: quiet, practical, and full.

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

— Ian & Alex

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

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.