The Ask and the Answer: With Bonus Short Story

Patrick Ness

Sep 2026 · Chaos Walking Book 2 · RB Media · Narrated by Sarah Ovens and Michael Crouch

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13 hr 22 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

Costa Book Award (Winner) • BookTrust Teenage Prize (Short-listed) • The Carnegie Medal (Short-listed)

“Grim and beautifully written. … Superb. … This is among the best YA science fiction novels of the year.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Reaching the end of their flight in The Knife of Never Letting Go, Todd and Viola did not find healing and hope in Haven. They found instead their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss, waiting to welcome them to New Prentisstown. There they are forced into separate lives: Todd to prison, and Viola to a house of healing where her wounds are treated. Soon Viola is swept into the ruthless activities of the Answer, while Todd faces impossible choices when forced to join the mayor’s oppressive new regime. In alternating narratives the two struggle to reconcile their own dubious actions with their deepest beliefs. Torn by confusion and compromise, suspicion and betrayal, can their trust in each other possibly survive?

Includes a bonus short story and sound effects throughout.

Costa Book Award (Winner) • BookTrust Teenage Prize (Short-listed) • The Carnegie Medal (Short-listed) “Grim and beautifully written. … Superb. … This is among the best YA science fiction novels of the year.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Reaching the end of their flight in The Knife of ...

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About the author

Patrick Ness was born on October 17, 1971 near Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He studied English Literature and is a graduate of the University of Southern California. He was a corporate writer before moving to London in 1999. He taught creative writing at Oxford University and is a literary critic and reviewer for the Guardian and other major newspapers. He is the author of eight novels including The Rest of Us Just Live Here and a short story collection entitled Topics About Which I Know Nothing. His young adult novels include the Chaos Walking trilogy, More Than This, and Monsters of Men, which won the Carnegie Medal. A Monster Calls won the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration, the Carnegie Medal, and was made into a movie and released in October 2016.

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