Category: Audiobooks

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.

This is the latest from the author of Never Let Me Go and his first release since winning the Novel Prize in Literature. Klara is an Artificial Friend who spends her days observing the folks browsing inside the store and passing by on the street, waiting for a customer to choose her. This is “a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?”(fiction)

Read by Sura Siu (No Planet B by Lucy Diavolo) – I sampled this audiobook and found what I heard of Sura Sia’s performance to be simultaneously soothing and ominous? Or maybe just foreshadowing? Very interested in this one.

A costly mistake left Carmen Aguilar a few credits short of being able to graduate, so she’s retaking an internship class to earn her high school diploma. That’s how she finds herself working as a Dream, performing at kid parties dressed in a giant Disney princess gown in the middle of a Miami summer. The gig is actually not that bad though, one she gets to do with her best friend. But then the boy who broke her heart joins the Dream team (sorrynotsorry), which is awkward, just as the Dreams are hired to perform at the quinceañera of the bratty cousin who betrayed Carmen and ruined her reputation, which is even more awkward. If she wants to earn those credits, Carmen will have to manage dancing in the brutal Miami heat, fending off that papi chulo ex of hers, and stopping her spoiled prima from ruining her own dang quinceañera. If she can do all of that, she might just get her happily ever after. I’m listening to this one now and I am obsessed! contemporary YA)

Frankie Corzo (Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey) – Okay, so I’m doing it (have I done this?) I’m adding Frankie to my list of faves. I enjoy spending time with her so much and feel like she keeps getting better and better at her craft. She was a Cuban mom (and tia, and tio, and prima, etc) in this book.

This book had me at “constellation magic on the Underground Railroad,” then I saw Bahni on narration and, well, ya know. Sold. In this exciting work of speculative historical fantasy, the Civil War is over. Hetty Rhodes is a former conductor on the Underground Railroad who used a combination of wits and magic to shepherd dozens of people north to safety. She and her husband Benjy have settled in Philadelphia where they dedicate themselves to solving murders and mysteries that White authorities want nothing to do with. Then Hetty and Benjy find one of their own slain in an alley; they bury the body and head off in search of answers, but “the secrets and intricate lies of the elites of Black Philadelphia only serve to dredge up more questions. To solve this mystery, they will have to face ugly truths all around them, including the ones about each other.”

Read by Bahni Turpin (The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi)

I’ve been meaning to read Elly Griffiths for years, and how can I resist when her latest is pitched for fans of Anthony Horowitz and Agatha Christie?? A 90-year-old woman, Peggy, dies of a heart condition—nothing to investigate there, right? That’s what Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur thinks at first, then the deceased woman’s caretaker, Natalka, shows up at the police station with some interesting information: while clearing out the woman’s flat, Natalka finds an unusual number of crime novels, all dedicated to Peggy with a cryptic postscript. Detective Kaur suspects there’s more going here that meets the eye, especially when a gunman breaks into the house, steals one of the books, and the novel’s author is found dead shortly thereafter. That marks the beginning of a string of attacks on writers from Aberdeen to Edinburgh. Must! read! (mystery)

Read by Nina Wadia (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach)

This audiobook is a 19-hour listen (less at the 1.2 speed at which I listened to it, but still) but I finished it in a little over two days. I went on so many dang walks, took my sweet time folding laundry, cooked a bunch—any excuse to throw on this audiobook because I just couldn’t stop.

Plot refresher: What we’re getting here is Southern Black Girl Magic with a modern-day twist on Arthurian legend plus a little romance, too. After her mother dies in a car accident, 16-year-old Bree Matthews needs an escape from painful memories and her childhood home. She and her bestie enroll at a residential program for bright high school students at UNC Chapel Hill thinking it’ll be just the thing to bring Bree back to life, but things don’t go according to plan. On her very first night on campus, she witnesses a magical attack that she very much wasn’t supposed to see and almost gets kicked out of the program for being caught off campus. In the aftermath of the attack, Bree discovers that the memory erasure that was supposed to work on her has failed, so she starts asking questions and ruffling feathers. This is how she comes to find out that Chapel Hill is home to a secret demon-fighting society known as the Legendborn whose members are descendants of King Arthur and his knights, and that she possesses a unique magic of her own. Also… a giant magical war is coming and it’s bringing bloodthirsty beasts. This book is a RIDE, yo.

It really is so special to spend time with a heroine like Bree, one who’s dealing with the big evil forces/scary monsters/buried legacy stuff while also navigating the microagressions (and the macro ones) that come with being a young Black woman in the south. I was so ready for the Arthurian stuff with a Black girl lead, but I really didn’t know how deep this book was going to go—or in what direction—and I don’t know how much of it I should tell you either. Part of the “oh… snap!” fun is in finding those parts out for yourself. I figured we were going to see Bree deal with unprocessed grief, and watch her field all kinds of uncertainty as she came to terms with her powers and the secrets of her ancestry. I did not know the exploration of those themes would also be a condemnation of cultural appropriation and our country’s racist past (I am once again bursting with how badly I want to say more here!). Tracy Deonn has done something so incredible with this book, one that makes so many important statements both in its drop-the-mic moments and its asides. Arthurian purists are gonna be big mad.

Joniece Abbott-Pratt’s performance damn near had me in tears. Bree really goes through it in this book and Joniece Abbott-Pratt conveys every one of those ups and downs with such precision, such conviction. The way her voice goes all tender and soft in the romantic bits, or how it cracks in the emotional scenes? Listen, I did the whole Kerry Washington lip quiver at a local park as I sat there trying to keep it together. What a knockout narrator for a knockout book. And guess what? There’s a sequel coming.

On the banks of the Ganges sits India’s holy city of Banaras, the place where pilgrims come to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. Pramesh has lived quite contently in Banaras for ten years managing a death hostel, shepherding the dying who who come to the holy city in search of a good death. But one day a lifeless form of a man is pulled from the river, a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh. It turns out it’s his estranged cousin Sagar, and his presence casts a shadow over the life Pramesh and his wife Shobha have built for their family. (fiction)

Read by Manish Dongardive (Mumbai Noir by Altaf Tyrewala) – I’m unfamiliar with Manish’s work, but that sample sold me in seconds! Soothing, smooth, very “tell me more.”

Toriiiii! I met Tori Telfer (and her mom) when I was still a bookseller in San Diego during an event for her first book, Lady Killers and I’m jazzed to hear about this next effort. This is a look at some of history’s notorious but often forgotten female con artists and the crimes they dared to commit. (nonfiction, true crime)

Read by Jaime Lamchick (Crooked Magic by Eva Chase) – Jaime is another narrator I’m not familiar with, but the sample feels like she’s the perfect person to read this book. Her reading gives me equal parts “this subject is fascinating” and “can you believe women get looked over even in the subject of crime?” Yessss.

Check this: in the far future nearly a thousand years removed from Earth, humanity survives inside of giant space animals called Zenzee. Cool cool cool. Humanity has also just about driven their giant space friends to extinction with this exploitation. Even better! The good news is that thanks to careful oversight by new minted ruler Doka Kaleigh and sacrifice by all of its crew, life inside the Parados I is now on the brink of utopia. But Doka’s rivals feel threatened by that success; “when a cataclysmic event on another Zenzee world forces Doka and his people to accept thousands of refugees, a culture clash erupts, revealing secrets from the past that could endanger their future.” The stakes are even greater for Doka, and that much stickier; he’s fallen for the one woman he is forbidden to love—his wife. (science fiction)

Read by Staci Mitchell (Colonize This! edited by Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman) and James Fouhey (The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert)

I said I was going to buy this one in print because look at that cover! I love me some Shayna Small though and I’m impatient, so I listened to it instead. Shayna (and Namima Forna) did not do me wrong!

It’s the day of the ritual blood ceremony that will determine if 16-year-old Deka be allowed to remain in her village and she really needs her blood to run red. But of course, her blood runs a brilliant gold, the color of the impure. In an instant, the village and family she’s known all her life want nothing to do with her, and she’s subjected to a fate worse than death. She wakes up some time later, dazed and confused in a room with a mysterious woman who makes her an offer: she can stay in the village and submit to her fate, or she can join an army of girls like her and go fight for the emperor. Seeing no other viable option, she follows the woman to join that army. The further she gets into the empire’s mission to eradicate a legion of demons knows as Deathshrieks, it becomes clear that none of what she’s taken for truth in her life is what it seems.

I loved everything about this conflicted heroine marching into battle armed with abilities she knows not the full power of, a young woman who though soft and tender is also as fierce as her blood is gold. Her origins are as much a secret to her as they are to us, and that slow revelation is just pure wow; it’s so satisfying to watch her question authority and trust her intuition, and of course embrace the power she was always taught to fear and despise. Then there’s the pure joy of the friendship she develops with the band of young women alongside her on the battle field, women with physical and emotional scars who ride as hard for Deka as she does for them. There is so much power and Black girl magic vibrating through this whole narrative, it gives me chills. I remember when there were little to no Black and brown girl heroines in YA fantasy (or you know, lit at large). Spending this time with (and rooting for) Deka was really special.

And if I haven’t sold it to you hard enough, here’s this amazing pitch: an African-inspired world that “basically imagines what would happen if the Dora Milaje from Black Panther were stuck in The Handmaid’s Tale and decided they weren’t going to take it anymore.” YES.

Shayna Small (The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson) delivers another solid performance here, giving us the full range of accent work in her repertoire. Small delivers all of them richly and passionately, bringing to life each of the characters’ distinct personalities. The audiobook clocks in at just under 13 hours, but it felt like half that. Go get it!

Evelyn is a brilliant scientist who’s just won a prestigious award for her research in the field of human cloning. She should be ecstatic, but her personal life has fallen apart. Not only did her husband Nathan cheat on her, he did it with a clone of Evelyn, a clone he created behind her back using her own research without her knowledge. The “oh snap!” moments don’t stop there though. That clone, Martine, is pregnant when she’s not supposed to be able to conceive, making her very existence an ethical violation. And another thing: she’s just killed Nathan in self defense after he attacked her first. This is a sci-fi light ride from start to finish that flips the domestic thriller on its head. Oh, to be inside of Sarah Gailey’s mind. What a place! (science fiction, thriller)

Read by Xe Sands (Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey, The Great Offshore Grounds by Vanessa Veselka)

Yesss we finally have the third book in C.L. Polk’s Kingston cycle! Robin Thorpe has kept her magic hidden for years to avoid imprisonment by the state, keeping her head down in Riverside. Then Grace Hensley comes knocking with wonderful news: Robin’s days of hiding are over! Freed witches are flooding the streets of Kingston and returning to the families they were ripped from. Robin begins hashing out a plot to ensure that Aeland remains free and just, but that won’t be easy. She’ll also have to face the “long-bottled feelings for the childhood love that vanished into an asylum 20 years ago.”

Read by Robin Miles (Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, The Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson, Just As I Am by Cicely Tyson)

Everyone who’s read this has told me two things: that it’s one helluva genre-bender and that you should go into it knowing as little as possible. So I’ll just give you this: “a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans” and then sh*t gets a little too real. I’m a huge fan of Lockwood’s Priestdaddy and can’t wait to see what she’s done with fiction! (fiction)

Read by Kristen Sieh (One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London)

For those not familiar with Christopher Marlowe, he was a famous Elizabethan poet and playwright, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s and probably his most important predecessor in English drama. He was a bright kid who went on to earn his B.A. from Cambridge and was soooort of working on his master’s a few years later. The university tried to deny him the degree, presumably due to a slew of unexplained absences and rumors that he’d converted to Catholicism and would soon be ditching Cambridge for a Catholic institution—how dare! Then a funny thing happened: advisers to Queen Elizabeth intervened, recommending that Marlowe receive the degree on account of his “services for the state.” In case you’re not picking up what I’m putting down here, it is pretty commonly accepted today that Kit Marlowe was a spy for the Crown. We’ll never actually know for sure because of how spying works, but historical records from that time (of which there are way more of than I expected!) make a pretty good case.

A Tip for the Hangman is an Elizabethan spy thriller that fictionalizes, with creative license, Christopher “Kit” Marlowe’s story. When the book opens, Kit gets called to a meeting by the head of his department at Cambridge, and he assumes Cambridge is about to give him the boot for slacking off. But no, not exactly: the Queen’s spymaster is at this meeting to recruit Marlowe to spy on the papist Mary Stuart (aka Mary Queen of Scots) and prove she’s involved in a plot to commit treason. I say “recruited,” but it’s more like he’s voluntold, so off he goes, more than a little nervous but hoping to get it over with quickly. Spoiler alert: nah.

Kit is smart and resourceful, but also clearly out of his depth. He gets by mostly by the skin of his teeth because he’s a great liar, but you just know his luck is gonna run out sooner or later. He’s also clearly conflicted by the work he does the further he gets pulled into this web of espionage, especially when his involvement starts to have consequences in his personal life. In the middle of a string of treacherous missions and impossible decisions, we also watch his career as a playwright explode. In spite of the fact that you kinda know the ending here ain’t a happy one (if you know a bit about Kit Marlowe), you just keep hoping the author will write in a change of course. The final chapter (and off, the final pages!) just gutted me. Let’s just say hope is a helluva drug.

The performance of this book by James Meunier is just wonderful. He nails the snark and irreverence of Kit’s character so well that you’ll forget, for just a moment, that this isn’t an author telling you their own story, but a voice actor reading the role of a fictional character. He tells it all so naturally, conveying everything— annoyance, love, lust, desperation, betrayal, abject terror—like he was feeling every one of these emotions himself in real time. The parts where he gets low and tender (you’ll see what I mean) are so heartfelt that I had to pause what I was doing and remind myself again that James was not personally traumatized by the beheading of Mary Stuart, or heartbreak.

This book is perfect for fans of historical fiction who also enjoy a queer romance, a lot of snark, and all the tense, suspenseful parts of a classic spy novel. Oh, and make sure to listen to the author’s note for some important notes on artistic license. It’s all just catnip fo history nerds.

I will do a full review for this one probably next week, because I just finished it and loved it so much! This Elizabethan spy thriller is a fictional account of a story many believe to be true: playwright Christopher Marlowe was recruited as a spy by the Crown while working on his Master’s at Cambridge in the 1580s. The Queen’s spymaster shows up one day and is all, “Get in loser, we’re going to prove that papist Mary Stuart is plotting treason.” He sort of gets voluntold, so off he goes, and in that moment his life—and history—are forever changed. It’s got a queer romance and a lot of snark and plenty of spy novel aaah-is-he-going-to-pull-this-off-or-die suspense stuff. This one is great for history nerds; it sent me down a Google rabbit-hole for sure. (historical fiction)

Read by James Meunier (Murder Ballads and Other Horrific Tales by John Hornor Jacobs)

You know I love mythology, but I’m especially excited to read this one because it’s rooted in Norse mythology. Why, you ask? Because I went to a high school called Valhalla and our mascot was The Norsemen, and I’ve been way into Norse mythology ever since the first day of my freshman year when I completed Odin’s March up and across a rainbow bridge and touched Thor’s hammer at the end (it’s a big ol symbolic ceremony that students do again in reverse when they graduate to this day, at least in non-COVID times. I’m not kidding). And now that you know another nerdy fact about me, go get this audiobook! It’s narrated by one of my faves and is all about the banished witch Angrboda who falls in love with that trickster Loki and risks the wrath of the gods in so doing. (mythology, fiction)

Read by Jayne Entwistle (Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series, The Poison Thread by Laura Purcell)

I make a gleeful little noise every time I see a romance or cozy mystery with characters of color at the center, especially when they involve food! In this YA rom-com. Bao Nguyen and Linh Mai are two Vietnamese-American teens who each work at their parents’ neighboring pho restaurants. Bao is stable and reliable, Linh a creative, artsy firecracker. For years, the Nguyens and the Mais and their competing establishments have been at odds, so Bao and Linh have mostly avoided each other. But a chance encounter brings them together and pow! Sparks fly. Sound familiar?! Like maybe a tale that takes place in fair Verona? (YA romance)

Read by Ryan Do (The Writer’s Library by Nancy Pearl, Jeff Schwager), Vyvy Nguyen (Quiet As They Come by Angie Chau)

I knew I wanted to read this book before I knew wtf it was about; I saw a black cover with bright pink text and a contributor list that included R.O. Kwon, Garth. Greenwell, Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, and Carmen Maria Machado. Then I read it, and what a reward. This passage from the intro to the book really sums it up beautifully: “By taking kink seriously, these stories recognize how the questions raised in intimate, kinky encounters…can help us to interrogate and begin to re-script the larger cultural narratives that surround us.” This collection of stories spans the sexual spectrum and ranges from the relatively mild to the super explicit, examining desire, consent, safety, and power dynamics, and asking readers to think about the ways in which gender, politics, and cultural norms inform those power dynamics. I love the framing of kink as empowerment, and the challenge to examine any discomfort you feel in reading these stories. Be warned: it’s NSFW. Don’t come crying to me if you forget to connect your ear buds to your phone at the office. (short stories, erotica)

Read by an ensemble cast: Corey Brill (The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu), Aden Hakimi (Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday), Lameece Issaq (They Never Learn by Layne Fargo), Kyler O’Neal (singer, writer, and actress), Joy Osmanski (This Time Will be Different by Misa Sugiura), Kaipo Schwab (Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse), Aven Shore (Notes on a Killing by Kevin Flynn, Rebecca Lavoie), and Ashton Grooms (actress you may know from Fox’s Star).

Sixteen-year-old Deka is a nervous wreck ahead of the blood ceremony that will determine if she will become a member of her village. She already stands out because of her powers of intuition, so she really, really needs her blood to run red. But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs a brilliant gold. If like me, you’re thinking, “oooh pretty,” hold that thought. In Deka’s world, gold is the color of impurity, and Deka will thus face a consequence worse than death. There’s hope though—maybe. A mysterious woman approaches her with a proposition: she can stay in the village and submit to her fate, or she can join an army of girls like her and go fight for the emperor. Does she choose acceptance for an uncertain fate? And is anything—or anyone—what it seems? (fantasy)

Read by Shayna Small (The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson, Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson)

I finally see what all the fuss about this feminist historical f/f romance was about. When we first meet Lucy Muchelney, her lover of several years has ditched her to marry a man for “security.” But her spirits perk up when she receives a letter from Catherine St. Day, the recently widowed Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text. Hey! Lucy happens to be an astronomer. Heartbroken and with no other professional prospects, Lucy takes a gamble and shows up at the countess’ estate unannounced to be like, “Yo, so, hire me!” She doesn’t expect to be bowled over by the countess’ beauty, but she is.

The countess is also taken aback, and not just because she’s feeling some things that she’s never felt for a woman before when she lays eyes on this unexpected guest. She’d only reached out to Lucy in the first place hoping she might know of a person who could help because Lucy’s recently deceased father was a renowned and respected astronomer. Lucy explains that her father not only taught her everything he knew, but that Lucy herself did a lot of the work her father was commissioned for. The countess is all about women’s empowerment, but fears introducing Lucy to society and giving her this important project will piss off the the Very Serious male scientists in the field.

She’s right of course, and it’s only when those science dudes show their entire misogynist asses at a society meeting that the countess makes up her mind: she’ll withdraw the funding she’d committed to that group for the project and will instead allow Lucy to live in her home while she works on the translation by herself. And that’s how Lucy comes to spends her days interpreting the complicated French text at this lovely estate. At night, Catherine and Lucy explore each other’s celestial mechanics if you know what I’m sayin’. Life would be grand if things stayed this way, but old wounds and sabotage by some salty (and inferior) science bros threaten to undo all this happy.

This one is read by Morag Sims (A Little Light Mischief by Cat Sebastian), whose delivery I found so delightful. The banter felt natural and matched the mood (tension! frustration! lust! science feelings!) of every conversation, and the steamy sexy times scenes were wonderfully executed (listen, not everyone can pull this off, but Miss Sims had me asking if it was hot in here). In light of my enthusiasm for this performance, I can’t tell you how excited I was to learn that Morag Sims will read the audiobook of Pride and Premeditation, our very own Tirzah Price’s debut Austen-inspired YA murder mystery novel out this spring!!!

But back to the book at hand: there are two more books in the Feminine Pursuits series if you like this one as much as I did: The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows is out now (just… don’t judge the cover) and The Hellion’s Waltz comes out in June.

Let’s kick things off with an enemies-to-lovers rom-com, shall we? Annika and Hudson go their separate ways after a summer fling in Vegas, never to see each other again… but not really! Annika gets the quite the unpleasant shock when she learns that Hudson is not only moving into her building in Downtown LA, but into the office right next to hers. She is trying to keep her app, Make Up, afloat, billed as “Google Translate for failing relationships.” Hudson has an app of his own called Break Up (really, bruh?) and it’s wildly successful, and it’s known as “Uber for break-ups.” Well isn’t that just peachy?? The two will clash again and again as they compete in a prestigious investment pitch contest. But again, I did say this was enemies to lovers, so… (romance)

Read by Natalie Naudus (The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart, Ace by Angela Chen). I really enjoy her pace and inflection!

I mentioned both this book and the next one in yesterday’s In the Club newsletter and I’ll say it again: I’m so surprised that the concept for this book wasn’t explored sooner. So much has been written and read about Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. But very little has been said about the extraordinary women who raised these American icons. In one stunner of a debut, Anna Malaika Tubbs (an educator, Cambridge PhD candidate, and Gates scholar, no big deal) celebrates Black motherhood by telling these women’s stories.

I recently found myself wondering what it must be like right now for the people MLK Jr. left behind: to witness a violent attempted coup largely led by white supremacists and then not a week later hear cries for unity underscored by MLK Jr quotes as though Dr. King wasn’t hated and persecuted in his time (and, you know, assassinated). This book feels like it came right on time; I for one am very interested in getting to know the women who raised these important figures, all of them taken too soon. For some bonus content, you can listen to Anna Malaika Tubbs on Jonathan Van Ness’s Getting Curious podcast. I especially enjoyed the part where he introduced her and said he “loves, like, a PhD moment.” (nonfiction)

Read by the author, whose voice is so bright and fresh! Her passion for this project is evident even in the sample for this title. I’m really excited to see what else she put out into the world.

It feels lazy to call this anthology impressive, but impressed I am. This is a community history by 90 brilliant writers, each of whom tackles a five-year period from 1619 to the present. Each writer’s approach is different: some wrote historical essays, others short stories, some shared personal vignettes. The result is an important body of work that “fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.” (nonfiction, history, essays)

Read by… everyone? This book features 87 different narrators, including Dion Graham, Robin Miles, Phylicia Rashad, Leslie Odom Jr., Bahni Turpin, and more. Oh my gatos!

Walter Mosley’s infamous Detective Easy Rawlins is back! This is, I believe, the 12th book in this series and returns to the streets of sunny Southern California. Easy “navigates sex clubs, the mafia, and dangerous friends when he reluctantly accepts the racially charged case of a traumatized Vietnam War veteran in late-1960s Los Angeles.” (mystery)

Read by Michael Boatman (Slay by Brittney Morris, Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley), who btw is an actor who’s been in aaaaaall of the crime dramas. I heard him and legit went, “Hey! I know him from SVU!” His voice was practically made for audiobook performance. What a perfect person to read an Easy Rawlins mystery!

I organically stumbled across Instagram posts by no less than six Rioters singing this book’s phrases in a 48 hour period! Nora is a teen living with her aunt in Northern California dealing with an awkward love triangle (love shape?) between her and her two best friends. But skrrrrrr! That issue is put on pause when Nora and one of those friends walk into a bank and finds themselves in the middle of a robbery. Things escalate quickly, hostages are taken, and law enforcement awaits outside. But there’s another wrinkle the robbers don’t know about: among the hostages is a young woman who’s been several girls in her short lifetime, and has enough dangerous criminal experience to be a seriously dangerous threat. (YA mystery/thriller)

Content warning: chemical use, physical violence, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, murder, torture, and gore.

Read by the author, Tess Sharpe!

Cicely Tyson is a living legend, an icon, a gem in our midst! This is Miss Tyson’s memoir chronicling a storied life and career: “It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. Here, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by His hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say.” (memoir)

Content warning: violence, racism, and chemical use.

Read by (are you ready??) Cicely Tyson, Viola Davis, and Robin Miles. Legends!

I looooove mythology and need this book in my hands now! Told from the perspective of Calliope, the goddess of poetry (and side note: one of my forever favorite characters in Grey’s Anatomy history), this book is a fictionalized account of the Trojan war that focuses on the women: Trojan citizens, Penelope awaiting the return of Odysseus, the Amazon princess who fought Achilles, and three goddesses who started the whole damn thing. And in the highest of all cosigns, Song of Achilles and Circe author Madeline Miller says Haynes has given a “much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.” I. can. not. wait. (historical fiction, mythology)

Content warning: mention of slavery, murder, violence, sexual assault, violence

Read by the author (a theme today!)

Jamie and Zoe are strangers who have a funny little thing in common: they’ve each woken up in apartments they don’t remember renting. They have no idea who they are or how they got there, and one more surprise: they have super powers! Jamie uses his powers to pull of bank heists and other shady endeavors while Zoe uses hers to rain down some vigilante justice. and that is how their paths come to cross. When they meet for a second time at a support group for folks with similar stories to tell, they realize they might all be part of a bigger plan. (fantasy)

Read by Emily Woo Zeller (Book Riot fave alert! The Bride Test by Helen Hoang, The Poppy War series by R. F. Kuang)

All of my library holds are coming in and I’m trying to keep up! I inhaled this one in just a couple of days, the second book in Sonali Dev’s Rajes series of Austen rom-com remixes.

Ashna Raje is not okay! She’s struggling to run the failing restaurant that was her father’s legacy and to prove to her estranged mother that she knows her own mind. When she gets a last-minute offer to be on The Food Network’s latest celebrity cooking show, Ashna agrees begrudgingly. She does it mostly to avoid having to see her mother, and because winning the competition means a cash prize and the chance to turn her restaurant troubles right around. Pero… here’s the thing: the gorgeous retired pro soccer player she’s paired with on the show was once the love of her life, the one who ghosted her when she was at her absolute lowest. He has reasons of his own for wanting to be on the show, and him leaving her may not have gone exactly like Ashna remembers it. Is this partnership a recipe for disaster? Or will it end in sweet success? (tw: suicide, sexual assault; descriptions aren’t extremely graphic, but may still be much for some)

I am always so impressed by how fun and hilarious Sonali Dev’s books are while tackling some pretty heavy issues. The women in all of her books (and all of her characters in general) are so dynamic and layered, flawed and relatable. Both Ashna and her mother have moved through the world in ways that are difficult to understand as onlookers until we examine their behaviors through the lens of trauma. I am still sitting with the feelings that surfaced for me once the motivations behind Ashna’s attachment to the restaurant and loyalty to her father were revealed, and when her mother’s decision to rebel against societal norms at the cost of her family is made clear. Sonali Dev continues to give us these thoughtful examinations of the ways in which women have had to advocate for themselves, often at immense personal sacrifice, and rewarding us with a deliciously satisfying happily ever after for joining her in that reflection.

As for narration, I cannot imagine a more perfectly suited voice for Sonali Dev’s books than Soneela Nankani. In addition to also reading Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, her catalog includes titles like The Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty, The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey, and Internment by Samira Ahmed. She gives you mid-30s anxious, Brazilian-British athlete swag, wise aunty energy, and more with seamless transitions.

So go, dear reader, and treat yourself to Recipe for Persuasion. Oh, and you don’t need to read the series in order, but do absolutely make some time for Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors! and look for Incense and Sensibility in July!

Amari has never stopped believing her missing brother is alive. Then she finds a ticking briefcase in his closet (totally normal!), and inside it is a nomination for a summer tryout at the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. She knows this organization is the key to finding her brother, and that’s why she soon finds herself competing with a whole bunch of kids who’ve always own magic exists. If she can accept that magicians, fairies, aliens, and other supernatural creatures exist, and convince her paranoid classmates that she isn’t, in fact, an enemy, Amari might finally have a chance at finding her brother. This book is the first in a new series. (middle grade fantasy)

Read by Imani Parks (Saving Ruby King by Catherine Adel West, Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton)

I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about this latest book in the Graceling Realm series. Bitterblue has been queen of Monsea for the past five years, slowly rebuilding her nation after her father’s horrific reign. She sends envoys to the nation of Winterkeep when she learns of lands in the east, but those envoys drown under suspicious circumstances. When Bitterblue decides to set off for Winterkeep herself, tragedy strikes again— a tragedy with devastating political and personal consequences. Meanwhile, in Winterkeep, the teenage daughter of two powerful politicians waits and watches. She’s the key to unlocking everything – but only if she’s willing to transcend leave behind the person she’s always been. (YA fantasy)

Read by Xanthe Elbrick, who also reads books two and three in the series (Fire and Bitterblue)

“The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit.” The new name given to her by the Angel of Death is Sanokfa, a name that means nothing to anyone but her and is her only tie to her family and her past. Now she searches for the object that fell from the sky and took everything from her with only a fox as her companion; anyone who gets in her way will face a girl whose looks and touch can kill. Whew, Nnedi Okorafor’s brain is a national treasure. (science fiction)

Read by Adjoa Andoh (Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie), one of the most rich, regal voices I’ve ever heard.

After she comes across a book featuring a love story between two women, a question takes root in seventeen-year-old Lily Hu: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?” She can’t remember exactly when the question planted itself in her, but the answer is obvious the moment she and Kathleen Miller walk under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. “But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father – despite his hard-won citizenship – Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.” (YA historical fiction)

Read by Emily Woo Zeller, a Book Riot fave! (The Poppy War for R. F. Kuang, This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone)

For over 15 years, August Sitwell has worked as a groundskeeper for the Barclay family, “a well-to-do White family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job” in their household’s all-Black staff. But the Barclay’s fortune has fallen and their money gone with it, so a desperate Mr. Barclay agrees to sell his cook Miss Mamie’s delicious rib sauce for some quick cash. Marketed under the brand name “The Rib King,” the sauce bottle features a caricature of a wildly grinning August on the label, and neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime from the sale. “Humiliated, August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that explodes in shocking tragedy.” (fiction)

Read by Korey Jackson (Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles, Let Me Here a Rhyme by Tiffany D. Jackson) and Adenrele Ojo (Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera, The Mothers by Brit Bennett)

I mentioned wanting to read this book over my holiday break, but my Libby hold didn’t quite come in on time. It finally arrived this week and the timing was perfect; I’ve been in the mood for a spy story and don’t come across nearly enough of them by authors of color! The plot: Marie is a young Black woman working as an FBI agent in 1980s New York. Her career has gone stagnant when she’s suddenly approached by the CIA to spy on the president of Burkina Faso, a figure being billed as a dangerous Communist despot; she has her reservations, but figures she may be able to leverage some information of her own if she takes the gig. But as we spy novel people know all too well, that spy life is not an easy one; she finds herself sympathizing with her target and questioning the US’s motives—and thus questioning her loyalties in turn.

The story is told in the form of a diary that Marie is writing to her young sons in the hopes that they will read it and understand her better when they’re adults. I loved this format so much for the insight it gave into Marie’s career and her psyche, into the ways her relationships with the mother (who left her), her sister (who died on assignment), and even her target have informed her every move—and not always in a good way. Marie is smart, capable, intuitive, but she’s also human, vulnerable, and a mother; none of the decisions she’s forced to make are easy ones, and the consequences of those decisions don’t just affect her. I loved getting into her head to live in that complicated grey area along with her. I clenched my teeth and held my breath through a lot of it.

The other aspect of the book that I’m a big fan of is how it shines a light on our country’s propensity for acting like the word’s police with, to be generous, less than noble intentions. This is an uncomfortable truth to sit with: we’ve meddled and contributed to instability worldwide under the guise of upholding democracy and fighting terrorism. Have we been the good guys in some of these scenarios? I hope so. But we’ve also done a lot of harm and don’t seem to like confronting that reality.

If you’re in the mood for a good, complex spy thriller with a POC main character and a lot of nuance, you know what to do. Bahni Turpin delivers another stellar performance that wonderfully embodies both Marie’s cynicism and passion. Is there anything she can’t do?!