Author: Vanessa Diaz

It’s finally here!!!! My former Read Harder co-host and wonderful friend, Book Riot’s own Tirzah Price, has a book out in the world! This is the first in a series of YA murder mystery Austen retellings (weeee!) In Pride and Premeditation, 17-year-old Lizzie Bennet is an aspiring lawyer. When a scandalous murder rocks London society, Lizzy is convinced authorities have imprisoned the wrong person and sets out to solve the murder on her own. But as the case and her feelings for the heir to the prestigious Pemberley Associates firm (Mr. Darcy, you may have heard of him) become more complicated, Lizzie realizes her dream job could very well get her killed. (YA mystery)

Oh and ehhem, the book is also Barnes & Noble’s April YA Book Club Pick. Just a casual flex for the people!

I was so excited when I found out Morag Sims was reading Tirzah’s book (The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley). Such a perfect choice!

Harlem,1998: after a series of pregnancies that’ve ended in heartbreak, Laila turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family, for help. She makes a deal to obtain a piece of caul from them, a precious layer of skin that’s said to be the source of their healing power; but the deal falls through and another pregnancy ends in tragedy. Meanwhile another baby is about to be born to her cousin Amara and then given to the Melancons to raise as their own. The matriarchs of that family predict that this child, Hallow, will restore the family’s prosperity, but Hallow grows up to question her identity and the way she was raised. As the Melancons thirst to maintain their status grows, Hallow’s mother Amara is determined to avenge her longstanding grudge against the family. Mother and daughter will cross paths, forcing Hallow to decide where she really belongs. (fiction)

Read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt (The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans, Legendborn by Tracy Deonn)

Helen Oyeyemi is an $@*# gem. Her books just take me out of my body! This latest is the story of Otto and Xavier Shin whose aunt has gifted them a magical train ride as a not-honeymoon honeymoon. The couple realizes that they appear to be alone on this former tea-smuggling train and soon realize that it’s not your average locomotive. When Otto discovers a secretive woman who issues a cryptic message, “further clues and questions pile up. As the trip upends everything they thought they knew, Otto and Xavier begin to see connections to their own pasts, connections that now bind them together.” (literary fiction)

Read by Ben Allen, Intae Kim, Jade Wheeler, Deana Taheri, Rosa Escoda, and Deepti Gupta. The only person I’m familiar with personally from that cast is Deep Gupta but I am already sold based on a preview!

If you don’t already know about Jenny Lawson and are looking for super candid, often hilarious, sometimes cringey (but charmingly so) musings on mental health peppered with personal anecdotes sharing some very honest struggles, look her up. This latest from Lawson “humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way.” (nonfiction, essays, autobiography/memoir)

Read by the author in her signature brand of wacky run-on sentences and relatable quirk. Love her so much.

This is a stunning beautiful desert fantasy set in the Americas. The main character is sixteen year old Xochitl, the cuentista in her village of Empalme. The people in her village give her their stories, then Xochitl returns those stories to the earth, to Solís, at the conclusion of the ritual. The confessor walks away free from the guilt and burden of their story, and Xochitl gives it story back to Solís and promptly forgets it. She’s been told, as have all cuentistas, that this ritual is a necessity for the protection off her village.

Hers is a lonely existence and often a heavy one; she longs to be free and to share her heart with a kindred spirit. Then a horrible tragedy in the village forces Xochitl to consider whether what she’s been told about her role is a lie. It’s on a journey across the desert to get answers that Xochitl is joined by Emilia, the cold and beautiful daughter of the murderous conqueror responsible for the tragedy that sent Xochitl on this quest in the first place. They agree to complete the rest of the journey as companions and soon find themselves drawn to one another. Their hearts could be the match Xochitl longs for… if they can survive the terrors that wait for them in the desert each night when the sun goes down.

We often get asked for recommendations for books where the setting is a character and this is precisely that kind of book. The desert is a living, breathing entity, one that both gives with unexpected benevolence and takes with horrible cruelty. This book is an homage to both the beauty and the terror as well as the people that inhabit these spaces. It’s a gorgeous F/F love story, an action-packed ride full of tons of Espańol, and a thought-provoking examination of the weight of taking on other people’s stories.

As for narration, Frankie Corzo (Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Everyone Knows You Go Home by Natalia Sylvester, Incendiary by Zoraida Córdova) really hasn’t let me down. Her tone pairs perfectly with the story, emotional and vulnerable yet full of quiet power just like Xochitl herself. She handles the pacing wonderfully and gives distinct personalities to each character deftly. I so enjoy spending time with her warm and lovely performances.

Borrowing its title from a speech by Josephine Baker at the March on Washington in 1963, Hanif Abdurraqib’s latest is a reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. “With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent.” If you’re a fan of Go Ahead in the Rain, Abdurraqib’s love letter to A Tribe Called Quest like I am, this is a must read/listen. (music, US history)

Read by JD Jackson (The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead)

Facing down an invasion by Fjerda, King Nikolai Lantsov must summon every tool at his disposal if he wants to win, including the monster within. Standing with him is Zoya the stormwitch who has lost too much to war and refuses to bury another friend; but duty demands she embrace her powers and become a weapon for the king, no matter the cost. Nina is working deep undercover as a spy in Fjerda, but her deep desire for revenge may cost her country its freedom—and the chance to heal her broken heart. (YA fantasy)

Read by Lauren Fortgang (Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo)

I love Wendy Heard and Frankie Corzo; put ’em both together in a YA thriller inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray set in my hometown and you get an instant addition to my TBR. Summer is winding down in San Diego; Veronica is bored and uninspired in her photography. Her best friend Nico is insatiable and obsessed with chaotic performance art. Then lonely, magnetic Mick changes everything between them, the perfect artistic subject and Veronica’s dream girl. As the days get hotter and longer, they soon find themselves falling in love. They’re so deep in all these feelings that they never see it coming: “One fire. Two murders. Three drowning bodies. One suspect . . . one stalker. This is a summer they won’t survive.” (YA thriller)

Read by Frankie Corzo (Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro, Bailey Carr (The Night Swim by Megan Goldin), Stephen Dexter (To Good to be True by Carola Lovering)

This book sounds! so! good! Opal is a fierce, independent Black woman coming of age in Detroit pushing the envelope with her music and style. She’s discovered by aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles at a bar’s amateur night, and off they go making rock music together. Then in 1970’s New York, just as she’s finding her place in it’s funky creative scene, a rival band signed to her label brandishes a Confederate flag at a concert. “Opal’s bold protest and the violence that ensues set off a chain of events that will not only change the lives of those she loves, but also be a deadly reminder that repercussions are always harsher for women, especially Black women, who dare to speak their truth.” (historical fiction)

Check out this ridiculous full cast: Janina Edwards, Bahni Turpin, James Langton, André De Shields, Dennis Boutsikaris, Steve West, and Gabra Zackman. Give it to me!

I can’t wait to get my hands on this! The title Horizontal Vertigo refers to the ever-present threat of earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. “With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city’s cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today…” Those are admittedly some fancy words to describe what sounds like a really wonderful deep-dive into the history (and a tour of) the sprawling metropolis that is my mother country’s capital city (nonfiction, travel guide, history, in translation)

Read by Gabriel Porras (The Other Americans by Laila Lalami). Gabriel is a Mexican actor born in Mexico City with this beautiful, richly accented voice. This should be a real treat on audio.

Oh my gatos, Aiden Thomas’ next book is here! In this dark and twisty reimagining of Peter Pan, Wendy and her two brothers went missing five years ago in the woods behind her house. Wendy was found, but her brothers weren’t. Years later, Wendy is 18 and the town’s children have started to disappear, bringing questions about her brothers’ mysterious disappearances back into the light and casting new suspicions on Wendy. She attempts to run away from it all and in doing so almost runs over an unconscious boy in the middle of the road. His name is Peter, a boy she thought lived only in her stories, and he wants Wendy to help him rescue the missing kids. Time for Wendy to face whatever’s waiting in those woods… I’m so excited to see what they’ve done with this story after the sheer delight that was Cemetery Boys. (YA fantasy)

Read by Avi Roque, who also read the audiobook of Cemetery Boys. Avi is a Latinx, trans, nonbinary actor & artist whose voice work is so bright and rather youthful sounding—perfect for Aiden’s books.

Virginia, 2004: After her fiancé disappears on what should have been their wedding day, Lara Barnes embarks on a desperate search for answers that leads her to her great-grandmother’s diaries. Those diaries speak of the dark and magical circus in 1920s Paris “where women weave illusions of magnificent beasts, carousels take you back in time, and trapeze artists float across the sky.” The Secret Circus owners’ daughter meets a charming young painter and embarks on a passionate affair that may have set off the curse that has haunted the women of Lara’s family for generations. That curse may also have something to do with her fiancé’s disappearance. (fantasy)

Read by Emily Lawrence (House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig)

Ooh, a spy thriller! CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan crossed a line with a colleague while on assignment and she’s been benched as a result. So when a former colleague and chief of the Russia Division recruits Lyndsay to join her for an internal investigation, Lyndsey jumps at the chance to help find a mole and prove herself. During the investigation, she strikes up an unusual friendship with fellow agent Theresa Warner, the wife of a former director killed in the field under suspicious circumstances who’s now known as the “Red Widow.” She has knowledge that proves invaluable to Lyndsey, but when she uncovers a “surprising connection to Theresa that could answer all of her questions, she unearths a terrifying web of secrets within the department, if only she is willing to unravel it…” (mystery, spy thriller)

Read by Mozhan Marnò (The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict).

This is part memoir, part cultural critique recounting Cathy Park Hong’s childhood and life as the daughter of Korean immigrants. She describes “minor feelings” such as shame and suspicion as occurring when American optimism contradicts lived experience—when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. (Read by the author)

Nicole Chung was a transracial adoptee, raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town when her Korean parents put her up for adoption at her premature birth. As Nicole grew up and found her identity both as an Asian American and as a writer (while facing discrimination her parents couldn’t see), she began to question the veracity of the mythologized version of her adoption story she’d been told all her life, one that painted her biological parents as making the ultimate sacrifice to give her a better life. (Read by Janet Song)

This comprehensive history by professor Erika Lee tells the story of Asians in America, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and other Asian identities from the 16th century to the present. It makes plain a pattern of anti-Asian policies and examines the labeling of Asian Americans as America’s “model minorities.” (Read by Emily Woo Zeller)

This is a graphic novel and thus not suited for audio, but worth the read. Activist and actor Takei shares the story of his family’s harrowing experience in multiple Japanese internment camps during World War II. Takei’s story is reminder of just how recent this atrocity in our nation’s history is and the importance of discussing that history in the here and now, especially when it’s so rarely taught in schools.

Here’s another bonus pick because of its visual element. Published in 2014, this comprehensive archive of anti-Asian images and writing documents the rise of the idea of the Yellow Peril (anti-Asian fear-mongering and paranoia) through an extensive collection of paintings, photos, pulp novel drawings, movie posters, comics, pop culture ephemera, and more.

Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine is a biracial, unenrolled tribal member with dreams of studying medicine who puts her future on hold to care for her ailing mother. She has a crush on Jamie, the new recruit on her brother’s hockey team, but lately she gets the sense that Jamie might be hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a murder and gets pulled into an undercover criminal investigation into a new lethal drug. She secretly pursues her own investigation on the side, using her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to suss out the culprits. But the deceptions and the deaths keep coming, and “Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.” (YA fiction, mystery)

Read by Isabella Star LaBlanc, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota stage and screen actor who played Tiger Lily in a Shakespeare Theatre Production of “Peter Pan and Wendy.” This is her first audiobook credit that I could find, I’m excited to listen!

Speaking of Shakespeare, I love me a reimagining of The Bard’s tales, don’t you? This collections brings together 15 acclaimed YA writers as they put their modern spin on ol’ Willy’s celebrated classics. Contributors include Dahlia Adler (reimagining The Merchant of Venice), Melissa Bashardoust (A Winter’s Tale), Patrice Caldwell (Hamlet), Brittany Cavallaro (Sonnet 147), Anna-Marie McLemore (Midsummer Night’s Dream), Samantha Mabry (Macbeth), Tochi Onyebuchi (Coriolanus), Mark Oshiro (Twelfth Night), and more!

Read by Lily Anderson, Ariel Blake, Patrice Caldwell, Caitlin Davies, Ramon de Ocampo, Almarie Guerra, Cary Hite, North Homewood, Barrie Kreinik, Nikki Massoud, Joy McCullough, Mark Oshiro, Avi Roque, Julia Whelan, and Landon Woodson

Daisy Patel is a software engineer who “understands lists and logic better than bosses and boyfriends” (I love that). She has her life plan all mapped out and it doesn’t include the marriage her matchmaking family expects of her, so she asks her childhood crush to be her fake fiancé. It just so turns out that this crush of hers, venture capitalist Liam Murphy, is in a bind of his own that could be remedied with a fake engagement: his inheritance is contingent on being married. A marriage of convenience will solve both of their problems, right? I love me a fake dating/marriage rom-com! (romance, romantic comedy)

Read by my fave Soneela Nankani! (His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie, The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey)

Beauregard “Bug” Montage is trying to keep his head above water and do right by the people he loves. He’s an honest mechanic who runs his own shop, he’s a devoted husband, and he’s a loving father to his three children. Bug is also knows as the best wheelman on the East Coast, but that life is behind him now. At least it was until a new auto shop moved into town and ate up his clientele. Now bug owes three months of rent on his shop and the bills keep piling up. So when he’s approached by someone from his former life, a shady character who did him real dirty on a job, Bug knows he shouldn’t trust him when he promises this new job will be an easy payout. He knows he should say no, but he can’t. So he agrees: one last job and then he’ll be out of the game for good. Guess how well that turns out?

Holy sh*t. The car chase and heist scenes are so intense, more than I forgot they could be in in book form. I listened to this one primarily while driving and kept clutching my steering wheel with white knuckles like I was the getaway driver in an illegally modified car. I was wound up tight for whole chapters at a time hoping the cops wouldn’t catch up, that the car wouldn’t crash, that the bad guys wouldn’t win (are there… any good guys?), that Beauregard’s wife and kids would stay safe. And that brings me to the most compelling part of the book: Bug as a character study. You root for Bug, but he’s a complicated man. He’s flawed and makes a lot of poor choices, some that feel avoidable and others made in desperation with his back against a wall. You feel for him even when he goes down the path we as readers so clearly see is not going to end well, and recognize that so much of his experience as a Black man in the south plays into the choices made available to him in the first place.

Lastly, we need to talk about this narrator. Adam Lazarre-White is an actor, writer, director, and producer known for roles in film and television like Scandal, The Young and the Restless and Ocean’s Thirteen (how fitting). And sir, I just wanna know *Rihanna voice* wheeeeere have you been all my life? How dare you be this perfect!? There’s an interview with S.A. Cosby at the end of the audiobook where he’s asked about the performance, and his response was to wonder if Adam Lazarre-White had been in his head while he was writing the book. It felt like he was Bug, and then like he was the rest of the characters, too. His delivery is so natural, effortless, so guttural in those tense moments and calm in moments of (charged, so charged) stillness. He nailed it. He just nailed it! This is easily one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to in years.

If you’re looking for dark, gritty, nuanced heist thriller that feels like The Fast and the Furious + The Italian Job + the Starz show Power but set in the south with fantastic, immersive narration, pick this up.

You can hear me gush about it on this week’s All the Books episode. Jess Zimmerman is the editor in chief at Electric Lit, and this is her cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology. She discusses 11 female monsters, including Medusa, the Harpies, and the Sphinx, breaking down how women have been labeled as monsters for daring to be everything from sexual to angry (ya know: human). This is a wonderful work of feminist cultural critique and a sweet sweet hit of dopamine for all my mythology nerds. (essays, nonfiction)

This one was read by the author and it’s great! On the podcast, I said I might have preferred this one in print. But! The only reason I personally felt that way is because mythology books *always* send me on a Google rabbit hole and I like to be able to go back and reference earlier parts of the book. It is still a fantastic audiobook!

The third book in the Brown Sisters series is finally here! Eve is trying to get her act together and her parents are about to cut her off I she doesn’t. She goes for a long drive that ends with her stumbling across a charming bed & breakfast and ends up in a (very)spontaneous!) job interview for a head chef position. It does not go well though, especially the part where Eve goes to leave and—accidentally? mostly?—hits the B&B owner with her car. Whoopsie! Guess she’ll have to stick around to help while he recovers for his injuries. Awkward! But also: steamy. See my full review below under Latest Listen! (contemporary romance, rom-com)

Leviathan is an aging nuclear submarine with a sacred and secret mission: to trigger the Second Coming when the time is right. Remy, who was taken from the surface world and raised to sing in a choir of young boys board the ship, is part of a strange crew who controls the Leviathan. Remy also has a secret: she’s a girl, and the ship’s old chaplain gave her the missile launch key just before he died. She promised to keep it safe, but the new chaplain has priorities of his own and safety doesn’t seem to be among them. Remy will have to decide for herself how to handle the fate of the world. (science fiction)

Read by Mia Ellis; I knew I wanted to talk about this book as soon as I heard a sample. Mia is new to me but her pace, clarity, and tone are exactly what I love in a tight sci-fi novel.