Get 3 months for $0.99 a month

LIMITED TIME OFFER
The Croning cover art

The Croning

 Preview
Get this deal Try for $0.00
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm PT.
Amazon Prime member exclusive: get any 2 titles with your free trial. Terms apply.
Just $0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 audiobook per month of your choice from our unparalleled catalog.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Croning

Written by: Laird Barron
Narrated by: Emily Zeller
Get this deal Try for $0.00

$14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime. Offers ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm PT.

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $31.26

Buy Now for $31.26

About this listen

Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us....

Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret... of The Croning.

From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.

©2012 Laird Barron (P)2012 Audible, Inc. Fantasy Fiction Horror Scary

What the critics say

"It’s a rare year in which a superabundance of fine horror novels — novels that reward rereading — appears. That said, most years bring at least a handful of novels whose titles can stand to be mentioned alongside Matheson’s I Am Legend, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and King’s The Shining. To this year’s list, add Laird Barron’s The Croning." ( Los Angeles Review of Books)
All stars
Most Relevant
Really enjoyed this book, especially upon second listening. If you like cosmic horror, Laird Barron doesn’t disappoint. I’m far from a literary expert but I’d put The Croning high on the list of excellent cosmic horror novels. Definitely worth a listen if you love horror beyond the stars, and just remember, the children of old leech love you.

Second listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the type of novel you really have to pay close attention and may be better read vs audio. In addition to being surreal and existential, there are three main sections. The first chapter builds a history, the second tells of a specific time period involving two main characters, and the third is the main characters experience later in life (as it relates to the first two chapters). It is very Lovecraftian, surreal at times. I enjoyed the protagonist, an older gentleman with a polite vocabulary (you scoundrel!!!). Lastly, I understand there was rationale with the disjointed and inconsistent narration, and the ending was clever, yet... the story overall felt condensed and incomplete, and by the end was not satisfied nor filled with dread.

Certainly Lovecraftian

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The book was fine, nothing particularly memorable but worth the read.

The narrator is awful, but only in very specific ways.

Every single older male voice sounds like a coked up Muppet bursting with good will, regardless of the situation.

The narrator only has maybe four total voices she can do, which leads to very hard to parse conversations which leave me confused as to who said what.

Most bafflingly, the narrator is incapable of pronouncing basic words, making the mistakes I associate with children not adult professional voice actors.

The poor narration really took away from the book for me.

Solid cosmic horror marred by erratic narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It's tough to find modern Lovecraftian Horror and it's even tougher to find good Lovecraftian Horror. this was a great read and the final chapters were really worth the journey. It had some pacing issues and this is a book that actually requires your focus. I had to listen to some sections multiple times to understand what was happening but it was definitely worth it. I narrator was fantastic.

Worth Listening To

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.