So Many New Audiobooks!

This week on the main site, I shared “7 Nonfiction Books for Disability Pride Month,” which included one of my favorite disability memoirs, A Face for Picasso. Henley and her twin sister were born with Crouzon Syndrome, a condition where the bones of their skulls fused too soon. They spent much of their childhood in the hospital, undergoing dozens of procedures to save their lives and to try to make their faces more “aesthetically pleasing.”

Henley gives us a look into her childhood. Of trying to just be a kid when the world around her constantly reminded her that she looked different than everyone else. Adults doubted her intelligence and other kids made fun of her and her sister. But we also see Henley’s joy of playing with her friends and the love she received from her family.

As Henley reaches young adulthood, she finds herself transitioning from a child where adults made a lot of the decisions about her health to an adult who makes her own decisions about her body and what procedures she wants to undergo. She discovers a new confidence in herself and her body.

In her performance of the audiobook, Henley gives us additional emotional insight into her story. I cried when she cried. I felt joy when she felt joy recounting her happiest memories.

The Costa Book of the Year, The Mermaid of Black Conch, is finally available in the US! This novel follows David, a man who rescues a woman caught on a fisherman’s hook. Once out of the water the mermaid begins to change. David must work to help hide the mermaid and tries to help her adjust to life on land.

I love Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s debut novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, and I’ve been so excited for her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds. Her memoir goes back to her childhood in Columbia. Her grandfather was a community healer, a man said to possess incredible abilities. Rojas Contreras examines her family legacy and what her role in the family mysteries might be.

In the sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built, we once again return to the world of Panga. The monk Sibling Dex and the robot Mosscap return from their travels to try to live a life that is filled with friends and goes along with their principles.

Hannah Jones had a core group of friends in college. After one of her friends, April Clarke-Cliveden, is murdered, Hannah eventually marries April’s boyfriend. A decade after the murder, Hannah is expecting her first child. More secrets about April’s death are revealed, turning April’s world upside down.

The queen of historical fiction is back with her latest novel Sister Mother Warrior. This novel focuses on two women during the Haitian revolution. Marie-Claire Bonheur, the first Empress of Haiti, grew up a free Black woman with immense privilege. Gran Toya is a warrior born in West Africa and brought to Haiti as an enslaved woman. Both women have an important role to play in Haiti’s revolution.

I loved I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, so I’ve been highly anticipating Erika L. Sánchez’s new memoir, Crying in the Bathroom. Her memoir discusses everything from white feminism to depression as she shares more about what it was like for her growing up in Chicago as the daughter of Mexican immigrants.