Every month, AudioFile Magazine reviewers and editors select the best new audiobooks for BookTrib’s readers. Get ready for spring with these award-winning March audiobooks.
Wild, Beautiful, and Free by Sophfronia Scott
Read by Channie Waites | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Brilliance Audio | 11.5 hrs.]
The evocative, melodic voice of Channie Waites brings Jeannette to life. Listeners empathize as Jeannette, the daughter of an enslaved woman, struggles to find her identity and reclaim her birthright in 1850s Mississippi. She suffers when her beloved father, a white plantation owner, dies and she is sold into slavery. Listeners meet many well-crafted characters — sympathetic and despicable — whom Waites makes very real.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
Read by Orlagh Cassidy | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harper Audio | 10 hrs.]
With her keen talent for British accents, narrator Orlagh Cassidy masterfully delivers a stand-alone from Jacqueline Winspear, which introduces powerful, brave heroine Elinor White. The story moves around in time from White’s current life in Britain in 1947 to her recruitment in the Belgian Resistance as an adolescent during WWI and her work as an SOE agent during WWII. Listeners hear the emotional, physical, and long-term impacts of two wars and learn of the unrecognized roles of women. Cassidy’s tone, pace, and pitch drive up the tension in the frightening war scenes. An engrossing experience of Winspear’s beautifully written work.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
Love at First Psych by Cara Bastone
Read by Santino Fontana, Stephanie Einstein, Mary Ann Jacobs, William Merryn Hill, Emily Bauer, Matt Boren, Piper Goodeve, Gabra Zackman, Mia Jenness, Elliott Fullam, Petrea Burchard, Ralph Lister, Jack de Golia | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Audible, Inc. | 4.5 hrs.]
Santino Fontana and Stephanie Einstein lead a full-cast performance of Bastone’s newest audio-first romance. Older college students Robbie and Marigold are working on a couples interview project for their psychology class, which asks if love at first sight exists. The full cast portrays the interview subjects, Robbie’s train-wreck parents, and their all-knowing professor. While the soundscape elicits an immersive listening experience, the true magic is the conversational chemistry between Fontana and Einstein. A dialogue-driven triumph.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
The Curator by Owen King
Read by Marin Ireland | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 14.25 hrs.]
Marin Ireland does exceptional work in a commanding performance that provides a vivid canvas for listeners. In a mysterious city recently devastated by conflict, museums and universities have been turned to rubble. Dora finds work as a curator at the last remaining museum, where she seeks her long-lost brother. King’s audiobook unfolds in a dreamlike fashion, with much character introduction and a myriad of short, significant moments. As the story progresses, the nature of the broken city and its main players emerges, capturing timely themes of systemic oppression.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
Read by Kristen Sieh | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 11.5 hrs.]
A California artist, teacher, and author of books about disconnecting from commercial culture offers a dazzling meditation on the possibilities and abuses of time. With its sprawling range of perspectives, historical references, and moving personal vignettes, this audiobook needs a performance from someone like Kristen Sieh. She narrates with emotional breadth and cultural awareness that honors the author’s worldview and hopeful insights. The author shows how keeping track of time is a modern invention, and obsessing about measured external time keeps us from connecting more fully with our deeper selves and the beauty around us.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
The Spite House by Johnny Compton
Read by Adam Lazarre-White | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Macmillan Audio | 11.25 hrs.]
Adam Lazarre-White narrates this terrifying debut novel with a Southern drawl that puts the gothic into this gothic thriller. Eric Ross, who is on the run with his two young daughters, needs to make a lot of money fast. He stumbles upon an ad seeking someone to inhabit a notoriously haunted house to find proof of paranormal activity. As Eric uncovers the history of the house, he becomes enmeshed with the spirits who seek retribution. Lazarre-White’s measured pacing keeps the chills coming and draws out the exquisite terror for the rapt listeners.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
Rikers: An Oral History by Graham Rayman, Reuven Blau
Read by Nathan Agin, Jonathan Beville, Nancy Bober, Gisela Chipe, Nicky Endres, James Fouhey, Philip Hernandez, Cary Hite, Eric Jason Martin, Kamali Minter, Karen Murray, Jose T. Nateras, Kiiri Sandy | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 15.5 hrs.]
Using multiple narrators to perform this disturbing audiobook was a masterful decision. The voices carry several different accents, tempos, tones, and even attitudes that reflect the diversity of those incarcerated or working on Rikers Island, a hellhole that is New York’s largest and best-known jail. The narrators are all first-rate as they recount stories of arrest, casual cruelty, simple kindness, extraordinary brutality, exploitation, and fear. The multiple narrators allow the stories to flow into each other while still separating both the individuals and their experiences. An engrossing look at the carceral state and the people within it.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
Jazzed by Jill Dearman
Read by Orlagh Cassidy | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Blackstone Audio | 9.25 hrs.]
Orlagh Cassidy delivers a strong performance of Jill Dearman’s captivating Jazz Age novel, inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case. Quiet, awkward Wilhelmina and bright, glittering Dorothy, both musical geniuses, room together at Barnard and become lovers. Will’s infatuation with Dolly and Dolly’s passion for danger lead them to the jazz clubs of Harlem, to lesbian salons, and eventually into criminal acts. Cassidy makes Will’s preoccupation with Dolly painfully real. As Dolly’s compulsion for increasingly risky behavior escalates, Cassidy gives her an irresistible intensity. Jazzed is edgy and disturbing as it reflects the destructive effects of obsession.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
Read by Julia Whelan | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harper Audio | 10.25 hrs.]
Julia Whelan’s moving performance enhances the engaging journey of Maggie, a nearly 30-year-old Toronto graduate student whose life isn’t going as planned. Maggie thinks of the amicable ending of her short marriage as a modern uncoupling, but eventually she realizes she’s fallen into unhealthy habits. Whelan delivers a livid email to a food delivery service in rushed, upset tones; it’s followed by an apologetic postscript. Emphatic wailing during a counseling session is another example of the dynamic listening experience. Listeners will be rooting for Maggie to find herself even during her darkest moments.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
The Porcelain Moon by Janie Chang
Read by Katharine Chin, Saskia Maarleveld, James Chen | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harper Audio | 11 hrs.]
Beautifully written and splendidly narrated, Chang’s novel is a story of love and friendship set during WWI, when 140,000 Chinese workers were imported to Europe as noncombatant labor. A series of tragic circumstances throws two women together, and the dangerous secrets they hold form a bond between them. Pauline Deng, a Chinese woman, is portrayed with exquisite delicacy by Katharine Chin, and Camille Roussel, a Frenchwoman, is perfectly portrayed by Saskia Maarleveld. Smartly drawn characters allow James Chen to enliven multidimensional men. Chang’s lyrical prose is enhanced by intelligent, thoughtful performances.
Read the review on AudioFile’s website.
This story appears through BookTrib’s partnership with AudioFile and contains material originating from the AudioFile website.
