Audiobooks 06/17/21

Awww yeah, the conclusion to Olivia Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series is here! After losing their piano shop to a con man in London, Sophie and her family move to a new town to start anew. Sophie meets stunning beauty Madeline Crewe and immediately suspects the silk-weaver of being up to no good—no one’s that good looking without having something to hide, surely! As for Maddie, she just needs oooone more big score to finally fund the weaver’s union. The last thing she needs is a nosy piano teacher poking around in other peoples business. Only one thing left to do: seduce her into the cause. Is it time for a body roll? I think it’s time for a body roll. (romance)

Read by Morag Sims (Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley)

Familia, I have been a big ol’ slacking slacker who slacks about including poetry audiobooks this year! This one was brought to my attention and I just couldn’t look away. Author Therese Estacion survived a rare infection that almost killed her, but not without losing both her legs below the knees, several fingers, and her reproductive organs. With elements of Filipino horror and folk tales, Estacion pulls from stories of ogres, mermen, and gnomes straight from Filipino children’s nightmares and weaves them in with imaginings from the hospital room where she spent months in recovery. This promises to be a unique work of poetry and an immersive, if haunting, listening experience. (poetry)

Read by the author

The follow up to The Silent Patient sorta feels like if The Secret History were a psychological thriller set in Cambridge instead of New England, but with less outright elitism and really scary rich people (this is a gross oversimplification, just trying to communicate some of the vibes and themes). Mariana is a troubled therapist grieving the loss of her husband. Her niece is a student at Cambridge, where Mariana once studied herself, and she’s bereft when her friend’s dead body is found. That friend was a member of a secret society known as The Maidens, a group of young female students who fawn over Greek tragedy professor Edward Fosca in most icky fashion. When other members of The Maidens start turning up dead, Mariana knows it’s the untouchable Fosca who’s done it. She’ll stop at nothing to prove it, and doing so will mean confronting some buried memories and unprocessed trauma. (mystery/thriller)

Read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell) and Louise Brealey (The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson)

Yeah, I’m including a second thriller because LAWD this sound like a ride! Oliver is a recovering addict who finally has everything he wanted: sobriety and stability, including his wealthy trauma surgeon partner Nathan. He knows he has no business going to a gay bath house, and even less business following a complete stranger into a private room therein. Just like that, a line is crossed, one Nathan can never ever know about. But then! Things go horribly wrong and Oliver barely escapes with his life. It’s bad, it’s very bad, and what to tell Nathan? That’s when Oliver falls back on old habits: he lies. Just in reading the description, I was saying aloud, “Nooooooo don’t do iiiiiitttt!” This sounds so thrilling and twisty. (thriller)

Read by Michael Crouch (They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera) and Daniel Henning (The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune)

Can we talk about that gorgeous cover? The power! Voya has long awaited her Calling, the trial all witches must go through before they come into their powers. Then the unthinkable happens—she fails. When an ancestor offers Voya an unprecedented second chance at the Calling, the price for redemption is steep: it will mean sacrificing her first love—who she’ll have to find and fall for first—and her entire family will lose their magic if she fails once again. This is also the first in a series, can’t wait to dive in. (YA fantasy)

Read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris)