Author: Vanessa Diaz

Here’s how I know 2020 did a number on me: I didn’t know that Anthony Horowitz was releasing a follow-up to Magpie Murders! Susan Ryeland has retired from the publishing game and is living that Mamma Mia life running a boutique hotel in Crete—but all that rest and relaxation is starting to bore her. Then the Trehernes come to the hotel and ask Susan for help them solve a murder case and find their daughter Cecily. During Cecily’s disastrous wedding weekend, a guest was murdered at her parents’ Suffolk hotel. The handyman was swiftly convicted, and Cecily went missing days after telling her parents she thought he was innocent. So where does Susan come in? It so happens that late author Alan Conway knew the murder victim, and he based the third book in his Atticus Pund detective series on this very crime. This is another book within a book situation (gimme!) where Susan will have to read between the lines (heyyoooo!) to solve the case.

Read by Lesley Manville (The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman), Allan Corduner (Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak)

Latina + tea + England!?! You already know I’m obsessed. Lila Reyes has a three-step post-graduation plan: 1) take over for her abuela as head baker at their panadería, 2) move in with her bestie, and 3) live happily ever after with her boo. Then it all falls apart! Concerned for her mental health, her parents send her to England for the summer to stay with friends. Dreary England is a far cry from sun-drenched Miami though, and Lila isn’t sure it’s her cup of tea (you were warned!). Then she meets Orion, a teashop clerk who appoints himself her personal tour guide and shows her all that she’s been missing. Tap this book right into my veins!

Read by Frankie Corzo (Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton, Incendiary by Zoraida Cordova—like I keep saying: Frankie Corzo is out here working!!)

1969 was a year for the whole world and Harvard specifically: it was the height of counterculture; campuses everywhere were trying to “curb the unruly spectacle of student protest;” Harvard began the very un-smooth process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and it was the year that 23-year-old graduate student Jane Britton, daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, was found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge apartment.

Then 40 years later, curious grad student Becky Cooper first heard whispers of this story. It’s one she would ultimately follow for 10 years, uncovering “a tale of gender inequality in academia, a ‘cowboy culture’ among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims.” I think I may be ready to dive back into books like this again, the story sounds so compelling!

Read by the author.

This book isn’t a new release, but the audiobook version specifically is… and it’s read by the one and only Blue Ivy Carter! Given how much the internet bullies of the world have had to say about this little girl’s hair all her life, this makes me really happy. Use your voice, little Blue!

For reasons, I did almost zero reading last week. What I did instead was watch a bunch of TV, including the documentary The Vow on HBO. Have you all seen this?! After episode one, I thought NXIVM sounded a little like that episode of The Golden Girls where Rose joins that positive thinking group—a little corny, a little cheesy, but harmless, and maybe even kind of nice if it helped folks find a sense of purpose and community. Pero ay, dios mio! It got WILD from there. Am I the only one who didn’t know the blonde from Smallville was in a sex cult that branded women’s pelvic regions with her and her “master’s” initials and that she’s been sentenced to 120 years in prison for sex trafficking??

It was hard not to draw comparisons between some the structures and schemes of this cult to good ol’ Scientology. That reminded me how much I enjoyed the audiobook of Troublemaker by Leah Remini, which she narrates herself. If you’re in the mood for a juicy read, have ever wondered that the deal is with Scientology and Tom Cruise, or enjoy pretending that Stacy Carosi (who gets that reference??) is spilling tea to you personally, this audiobook delivers.

I love me some David Sedaris, and goodness knows I could use a laugh. This is a collection of the best stories and essays from his remarkable 25-year career, all selected by Sedaris himself. While I’m a little bummed that “Santaland Diaries” didn’t make the cut, I am overjoyed to see that ‘You Can’t Kill the Rooster” did along with several other favorites.

Read by the author, because who else could do David Sedaris better than David Sedaris??

Lucy and Jake are happily married, and Lucy has set her career aside to devote her life to their kids and a finely tuned domestic routine. Then one afternoon, she gets a call that will forever alter the course of their lives: the caller claims his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband. Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but on one condition – Lucy gets to hurt Jake three times. I’m scared. Are you scared? I feel like we should be scared.

Read by Clare Corbett (The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley)

Raised outside of Boston, Ivy was taught by her grandmother to use her mild appearance for cover in her thievery of yard sales and secondhand shops. But the jig is up when Ivy’s mother finds out about these schemes and Ivy is swiftly sent packing to China.

Years later, now back in Boston, Ivy runs into the sister of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy from a wealthy political family that was once the object of Ivy’s obsession. It feels like fate, and before she knows it, she’s reeling Gideon in at lavish parties and island getaways. “But just as Ivy is about to have everything she’s ever wanted, a ghost from her past resurfaces, threatening the nearly perfect life she’s worked so hard to build.”

Read by the prolific Emily Woo Zeller (The Bride Test by Helen Hoang, The Poppy War series by R. F. Kuang)

For our most recent episode of the Read Harder podcast, Tirzah and I talked about plays written by an author of color and/or a queer author. I found one of my picks on audio, so I’m sharing that with you today.

In 1846, Dr. George Barry has recently come to Alabama. Philomena is his wife’s 19-year-old servant and also an assistant to Dr. Barry in his quest to cure vaginal fistulas. As such, she tends to his patients, other enslaved Black pregnant women. Philomena is herself is pregnant with Dr. Barry’s child; when she becomes the patient, her disastrous childbirth changes her life and the doctor’s life forever.

Now for some background: this is a historical drama inspired by the life and experiments of Dr. J Marion Sims and the lives of three of the many enslaved black women he worked on (Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey are the only names we know of today). Who is Dr. J Marion Sims, you ask? He’s the dude credited as the “father of modern gynecology,” a 19th-century physician and plantation owner who invented the vaginal speculum (“yay”). He pioneered the surgical technique to repair vaginal fistula, a very common 19th-century childbirth complication. Sounds great, right? Well, to quote the folks who host the Queens Podcast (unrelated, but interesting, funny, and super sweary): “history is a bag of d*cks.”

The research behind Dr. Sims’ pioneering technique was done on enslaved women, both ones that he personally owned and others he “ordered” from other plantations. If you aren’t already throwing up in your mouth, brace yourself: he conducted all of his experiments on these women—some of whom had up to 30 procedures performed on them—WITHOUT ANESTHESIA. While contemporary physicians, historians, ethicists, etc condemn Sims’ methods, there are those who continue to defend him; he was “simply a man of his time,” don’tcha know! Those enslaved women with fistulas probably wanted the treatment rull bad and would have consented to the treatment! The problem is that back then, their consent wouldn’t have been any kind of a factor; all that was needed was consent from their owners, who were of course invested in these women’s recovery for purely selfish when-can-she-get-back-to-work reasons.

Behind the Sheet is a fictional exploration of the untold stories of these women, a slim but impactful play that reminded me so much of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. Like Henrietta Lacks, the women “treated” by Dr. Sims were violated and robbed of their agency in the name of science. As with Colson Whitehead, Charly Evon Simpson manages to write with impossible restraint about a sequence of horrifying events, conveying their brutality with sparse language that still manages to bowl you over.

While this isn’t exactly the kind of audiobook I’d pick up this week when I’m all in my feels, it is worth spending time with whenever you have the brain space to do so. It was my first time listening to a play on audio, and I’ll admit it took some getting used to: with no narrator to guide you along the way, you really have to concentrate on each character. Don’t let that dissuade you though, it’s not a bad thing! It’s ultimately so immersive, a different way to take in the format of a play.

Read by an ensemble cast: Monica McSwain, Matthew Floyd Miller, Dominique Morisseau, Larry Powell, Devon Sorvari, Josh Stamberg, Jasmine St. Clair, Danielle Truitt, Inger Tudor, Karen Malina White.

If you thought I wasn’t going to sneak in at least one more witch book, HA! This one is about Emilia and Victoria, twin sisters who are also both strega! That’s right: outwardly, they’re living a normal life, working in their family’s Sicilian restaurant; secretly, they’re witches. When Victoria misses dinner service one night, Emilia goes looking for her and finds her badly desecrated body. Emilia will stop at nothing to avenge her beloved twin, even if that means using that old forbidden magic.

Read by Marisa Calin (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix, Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle)

John Harvey was a neurosurgeon a decade into retirement when a sheriff showed up at his door with a summons. It was a malpractice suit, it did not go well, and Dr. Harvey never got over it. In this memoir, his son Brian Harvey shares the story of a boating adventure he took with his wife, his dog, and a box of documents that surfaced after his father’s death. That box turns out to contain every nurse’s record, doctor’s report, trial transcript, and testimony related to the malpractice case. Only Brian’s father had read it all – until now. Brian finally finds out what happened in the OR on that crucial night and why Dr. Harvey fought the excruciating accusations.

Read by Jason Gray

Tabitha has just returned to her hometown in England when a body is found and she’s blamed for the murder. She attempts to solve her own case from prison as her entire life and past are picked apart. As she attempts to unravel the truth, she realizes her memory of the day in question is a blur. She can’t be guilty. She knows she’s not guilty! She.. thinks she’s not guilty?

Read by Michelle Ford (The Last Wife by Karen Hamilton)

Mike and Benson are a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and a Black day care teacher living together in Houston. While the years they’ve been together have been good ones—good food, good sex, and, ya know, love—they’re not quite sure why it is they’re still together. When Mike finds out his estranged dad is dying in Osaka, he picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. There he undergoes an extraordinary transformation as he discovers the truth about his family and his past. Pick this up if you’re in the mood for a “funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you’re supposed to be, and the limits of love.”

Read by Akie Kotabe (Inheritors by Asako Serizawa) and Bryan Washington ( Lot: Stories)

I did not do much non-work reading last week, in part because I took a week off to relax and celebrate my 36th turn around the sun, and mainly because November 3rd is just around the corner and I have apparently just now reached peak Can’t Deal. My focus is non-existent.

So for what I’m sure are obvious reasons, I’m going to go with a throwback hit and reminding everyone about Everything’s Trash, but It’s Okay. I recommended this book waaaaaaay back when I first took over the Audiobooks newsletter! Phoebe Robinson is a hilarious comedian, actress, writer, and one half of the Two Dope Queens podcast and HBO special (I wish both were still going!) Her first book, You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain had me hollering in public and this second effort did not disappoint. No one does excessive hashtags, silliness, and Bono thirst (and I do mean thirst, so much thirst) with an injection of thoughtful social commentary quite like Phoebe does. Phoebe’s narration of personal anecdotes had me cry-laughing and cringing at the same time. Really though, it’s her cultural criticism and musings on feminism, politics, body image, workplace parity, and dating that really set it off. This book is the essence of Phoebe: smart, funny, and a little (a lotta) extra.

If you, like me, are hyper aware that everything’s trash and aren’t feeling all that okay, pick up this audiobook. Permit yourself some laughter and hope.

You may recognize Emily M. Danforth as the author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post! Plain Bad Heroines is her adult debut, a Victorian gothic horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls (you know I love me a boarding school book!). It’s a story within a story told in multiple timelines full of queer romance and Hollywood satire, and includes black-and-white period-inspired illustrations in the print version. Xe Sands was a phenomenal choice for narration: she lends that slow, haunted quality to her performances that’s so well suited for this kind of story.

Read by Xe Sands (Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey, Wanderers by Chuck Wendig, The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro)

You know Lindy, I know Lindy. We all know and love Lindy! In her latest, West goes back to her movie critic roots to reexamine—and this part I’ve got to quote—”beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years with an eye toward the big questions of our time: Is Twilight the horniest movie in history? Why do the zebras in The Lion King trust Mufasa – who is a lion – to look out for their best interests? Why did anyone bother making any more movies after The Fugitive achieved perfection? And, my god, why don’t any of the women in Love, Actually ever f–king talk?” I can’t wait to read this one—I’m in the mood for Lindy West’s brand of funny.

Read by the author.

What if Colin Kaepernick had been assigned a hottie to manage him right when he took that knee, and then he fell for her and she fell for him and both love and activism prevailed? Alexa Martin allows us to imagine this very scenario with the fourth book in The Playbook series. Elliot Reed had landed her dream job as Strategic Communications Manager for the Denver Mustangs, and things are going well— that is until star quarterback Quinton Howard Jr. uses his platform to make a statement and takes a knee during the national anthem. Their initial meeting doesn’t quite go smoothly, but as they spend more time together…. ya know.

Read by Soneela Nankani (The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey, Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev) and Cary Hite (Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse by Marvel Press)

Journalist and activist Paola Ramos takes us on a cross-country road trip as she explores the communities defining the controversial term Latinx. “She introduces us to the indigenous Oaxacans who rebuilt the main street in a post-industrial town in upstate New York, the ‘Las Poderosas’ who fight for reproductive rights in Texas, the musicians in Milwaukee whose beats reassure others of their belonging, as well as drag queens, environmental activists, farmworkers, and the migrants detained at our border.” I have seen so much discussion around the term Latinx, a word that’s meant to be more inclusive that has somehow caused a lot of debate within the community it’s supposed to describe. I can’t wait to dive into this exploration.

Read by the author.

I didn’t do much new audiobooking this weekend on account of my little vacation, but I thought of this awesome book as I was rewatching old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy while packing for said trip. Reading this was basically Grey’s Anatomy in book form if the show took place in England instead. In the US edition of his international bestseller, comedian and former medical resident Adam Kay recounts his experience as a first year doctor, and why he eventually left the profession altogether.

Some of the anecdotes he shares from his time as an OB-GYN doctor really do sound like they were dreamt up by Shonda Rhimes: working 97-hour work weeks, being exhausted out of his mind, rushing to answer a series of urgent pages and treat all kinds of cases. One moment you’re laughing hysterically at the outright hilarity of some of those patient interactions, and then ten minutes later your eyes are fogging up when you’re hit with a heartbreaking loss. It’s a very honest account of one man’s time in a profession that, while ultimately noble, comes with its fair share of devastation, one that wraps up with a call to acknowledge the work that the NHS does. If you’re in the mood for a lot of laughs plus a call to action with a lot of heart woven into the wry humor, pick this one up.

Read by the author.

In a magical world reminiscent of Regency England, Beatrice Claybourn wants nothing more than to be practice magic as a profession. But in this society, women are fitted with a collar that will cut off their powers as soon as they’re wed—and wed thus must. When Beatrice locates a rare grimoire that will help grant her wish to do magic, another sorceress swoops in and take the book right out from under her. Beatrice strikes a bargain with a spirit to get the grimoire back, one that ends with her kissing the stealing sorceress’ very attractive brother. Beatrice is faced with an impossible choice: does she give into love, wed this lovely man, and in doing so safe her family from penury at the cost of her hopes and dreams? Or does she follow her heart and turn her back on everyone she loves?

Read by Moira Quirk (The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley, Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir)

I had to sneak in at least *once* witchy read, and this one comes to us from the author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January (go read that one too!). It’s 1893 in New Salem and witchcraft is a thing of the past. But when the Eastwood sisters join a group of local suffragists, they find themselves tapping into the old ways to change the course of history.

Read by Gabra Zackman (I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, Sadie by Courtney Summers, Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage)

This dark fantasy historical novella puts a supernatural twist on the Ku Klux Klan, as if it weren’t already scary enough! The regular ol’ awful human racists are known as “Klans,” and hiding among them are literal, actual demons known as “Ku Kluxes” who ride across the nation spewing fear and violence. Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters are on a mission to hunt those that hunt them armed with blade, bullet, and bomb. Then Maryse senses something awful brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to reach a whole new level of terror.

Read by Channie Waites (The Black God’s Drums by P. Djeli Clark, I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal, Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel Jose Older)

Some know Kwame Onwuachi as a contestant on Top Chef, but there is so much more to his fascinating story. By age 27, he’d both opened and closed Shaw Bijou, one of the buzziest fine-dining establishments in America. This restaurant was the embodiment of his culinary vision. From the flavors on his menu to the lighting fixtures and the diversity of his kitchen staff, Onwuachi poured his very soul into executing every element of that vision to perfection. And just like that, it was gone.

To get to that moment in Onwuachi’s journey, he takes us back to his childhood in the Bronx where he learned to cook in his mother’s kitchen. We follow him when he’s sent to Nigeria to “earn respect,” and when he returns to the US and succumbs to the allure of the streets. Even in his lowest moments—blaming himself for his parents’ separation, enduring his father’s violent temper, dealing and spiraling in his drug use—food remains a constant. It is eventually the thing that pulls him out of his haze and redirects the course of his life as a truly talented and intuitive chef.

His food is a mouth-watering mix of familiar and inventive (do not read this while hungry), from his mother’s étouffée to his gourmet riff on steak and eggs (several recipes are included much to my delight). But it’s Onwuachi’s resilience in the face of so much adversity, some of his own creation and a lot of it systemic, that leaps off the page. He is honest with himself and us as readers about his mistakes and shortcomings while also confronting the racism pervasive in the restaurant space. You might go into the book expecting to grieve the loss of his restaurant, and you will for a moment. But you’ll also recognize that Onwuachi is the definition of hustle, that the closing of one door was indeed the opening of another.

This very candid memoir wasn’t just a breath of fresh air and an explosion of flavor, it was a state of the union of sorts regarding the culinary world’s treatment of people of color and a call for the industry to change. It’s read by Onwuachi, which you already know I’m here for; his narration was so natural, and filled with the care you just know he puts into his food.

TW: child abuse