Fall Frolics with Corgis, Great Food, and Audiobooks

On my fall walks around my neighborhood while Dylan and Gwen fight over who gets to choose where we go next, I like to listen to something on the more peaceful side of things. Perhaps subconsciously I’m trying to restore balance to the universe. One of my recent listens was Win Me Something by debut author Kyle Lucia Wu. The print edition of the novel is out now from Tin House, one of my favorite indie presses.

Wu’s debut follows WIlla, a 20-something biracial Chinese American woman trying to find a direction for her life. When she was small, her parents split, remarried, and started new families with their new partners. Since then, Willa has never felt as if she belonged anywhere.

At the start of the story, Willa finds a new job as a nanny to a white, well-off couple living in Manhattan. Their daughter, Bijou, loves to cook. But since she’s only around nine years old, she needs a lot of help. As Willa cooks with her charge, she begins to feel like she belongs.

The narrative frequently flashes back to Willa’s childhood with meals seated around one table or another. A backroom bar with her dad, a plate of sweet breakfast food with her mom, her grandmother teaching her how to make a family recipe—each of these moments represent a moment where Willa felt incredibly close to her parents, yet still never completely part of their lives.

Natalie Naudus, a new favorite audiobook narrator of mine, performs Win Me Something, perfectly capturing Willa’s insecurities and inner angst about where she belongs in the world. I will definitely be picking up more audiobooks Naudus performs, so stay tuned!

Frances Howard meets the astute, diminished Anne Turner in the Jacobean Court. They strike up a friendship and their fates become intertwined. Political intrigue, marriage proposals, and backroom deals—this work of historical fiction has it all.

Narrated by Sarah Durham (The Lies You Told by Harriet Tyce and Whispers of Scandal by Julie Corbin)

I adore Africanfuturist author Nnedi Okorafor and her fantastical stories. In Noor, we meet Anwuli Okwudili, though she prefers to be called AO. Through a series of issues with her birth and an accident shortly after her birth, AO feels artificial, like her disabled body makes her less human. To her, AO stands for artificial organism. But then, AO comes to accept all that she is: a disabled woman who uses necessary accommodations to live her life.

Narrated by Délé Ogundiran (Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham)

Alexander Woodroe knows his star is falling. After a bar fight, his job and his very career, is on the line. Lauren Clegg has been hired to keep him in line so he has no more drunken fights. This is a romance novel. We know where this is heading. But it’s sure to be one heck of a ride.

Narrated by Kelsey Navarro (Loud Mouth by Avery Flynn and Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan)

Nebula award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders is back with her third book this year (my goodness!), Even Greater Mistakes. In this short story collection, we meet a range of characters, all with their own fantastical adventures to experience.

Narrated by Luis Moreno, Maria Liatis, and Jen Richards (One of Us Is Next by Karen M. McManus and Bruja Born by Zoraida Cordova)

Esi Agyekum somehow finds herself the one everyone in her family goes to with their secrets. But as she grows up from girlhood into a young woman, she begins to wonder why men and women’s secrets have different consequences.

Narrated by Anniwaa Buachie (Accra Noir edited by Nana-Ama Danquah)