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Hola Audiophiles! Well, if I haven’t said it before, I’ve officially reached that point where so many new books come out each week that picking which ones to include in this newsletter is hard. It feels like deciding which kids get to be perform in the school play and which ones get rejected! While I sit here with my guilt that matters literally not at all, get into these new listens and tell me what you’ve been loving lately!
Ready? Let’s audio.
New Releases – February 11 (publisher descriptions in quotes)
Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, narrated by Maria Liatis – It’s 1979 in Baja California, Mexico and Viridiana is bored. Real bored. The most bored. Then a trio of wealthy American tourists arrives for the summer and Viridiana is immediately drawn to them, mixing herself up in their glamorous lives. Problem! One of them turns up dead. Guess she should have minded her business!
Narrator Note: Maria Liatis recently Adam Silvera’s Infinity Son, is part of the ensemble cast of both One of Us is Lying and Once of Us is Next Karen McManus by Karen McManus, and is also the voice of Zoraida Cordova’s Bruja Born.
American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson, narrated by the author – From the author of Death in the Air comes this account of the birth of criminal investigation as we know it. “Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock captures the life of the man who pioneered the science our legal system now relies upon – as well as the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them.”
A Witch in Time by Constance Sayers, narrated by Courtney Patterson, Claire Christie, Brittany Wilkerson, Stephanie Willis – Helen Lambert has lived life after life—she’s been an actress in old Hollywood, a rock star in 1970s LA, a piano virtuoso in 1890s Paris. The thing is: she doesn’t know it. That is until a mysterious presence in her latest life hits her with a tale too far gone to be true, except it is: she was cursed long ago to experience the same tragic love story over and over again, but might now have the power to break that terrible spell.
Narrator Note: I know just about nothing about this cast of narrators! they each have a decent to extensive catalog of work, just none that I am particularly familiar with. I did sample A Witch in Time though and I liked what I heard!
Stormsong by C.L. Polk, narrated by Moira Quirk – Yessssssss, the followup to Witchmark is here! Grace grapples with the consequences of helping her brother Miles reveal a dark and terrible secret at the based of Aeland society. “With the power out in the dead of winter and an uncontrollable sequence of winter storms on the horizon, Aeland faces disaster. Grace has the vision to guide her parents to safety, but a hostile queen and a ring of rogue mages stand in the way of her plans. There’s revolution in the air, and any spark could light the powder.”
Narrator Note: Elizabeth Hoyt readers may recognize Mora Quirk as she narrates a lot of Hoyt’s work. She’s also the voice of Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series and of Book Riot favorite Gideon the Ninth!
Latest Listens
All this election stuff has my head spinning and rely on the Pod Save America podcast to help weed through the mess. They break it all down and make it so accessible! If you aren’t already hip to this show, it is one of many in the growing Crooked Media empire. My latest fave, Hysteria, is what got me thinking of this backlist bump: Who Thought This Was A Good Idea by Alyssa Mastromonaco.
Alyssa is one of the regular hosts of Hysteria this is one of my faves of the Obama staffer books. It chronicles her career in politics, focusing in large part on her time working as Barack Obama’s Deputy Chief of Staff. It’s a political memoir, and a good one, but it’s also a really honest and hilarious account of what it’s like to be a woman in politics specifically: the discrimination, the fight to make your voice heard, the second guessing of our instincts. She gets really real about the toll it often took on her physical and emotional being to do her job, in spite of having a really rad freaking boss. I love this audiobook, though I do wish I’d known about playback controls back when I listened to it. There are a couple of times when her narration feels a liiiiilte bit too I’m-reading-the-words-on-this-page-and-forgetting-to-include-my-personality, but I think some of that can be remedied by kicking up that playback to a 1.5x.
From the Internets
15 Podcasts and Audiobooks to Help Your Commute Fly By from Self.com
The best audiobook apps for Android
Over at the Riot
This roundup of new and forthcoming LGBTQ YA audiobooks reminded me how badly I want to read We Unleash the Merciless Storm by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore, and now a whole bunch of other books too!
What are your audiobook quirks?
That’s all I got today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with audiobook feedback & questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the In The Club newsletter, peep the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Tuesday and Friday too!
Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa