With cozy sweater-weather fast approaching, our friends at AudioFile Magazine have assembled the best audiobooks of the season. So grab a comfy blanket, some hot cocoa and a set of headphones, and settle in for these stellar reads!
The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley
Read by AhDream Smith, Erin Spencer, Khaya Fraites | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 11.75 hrs.]
Narrators AhDream Smith, Erin Spencer and Khaya Fraites draw listeners into the lives of three single teenage mothers — Simone, Emory and Adela. Through alternating perspectives, the narrations capture each character’s struggles and hopes as the women navigate pregnancy and motherhood while coming of age in Padua Beach, Florida. Mottley’s character-driven writing, combined with the narrators’ compelling performances, results in an unforgettable listening experience.
Read the review here.
When The Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, translated by Alice Menzies
Read by Ifan Huw Dafydd
[Random House Audio | 7.5 hrs.]
Ifan Huw Dafydd gives a performance worthy of this emotional and powerful debut, winner of the Swedish Book of the Year award, the August Prize. Listeners will become attached to Bo, an elderly man who is determined to keep his son from taking his dog, Sixten, now that his wife is in a facility for dementia. Listeners will be moved by Bo’s heartfelt journey as he contemplates his life and relationships, speaks to his beloved wife, and considers his place as a friend, son and father.
Read the review here.
She Didn't See It Coming by Shari Lapena
Read by January LaVoy | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Penguin Audio | 9.75 hrs.]
January LaVoy gives a theater-caliber performance in this suspense novel involving the disappearance of a young woman from an upscale condo. When Bryden fails to pick up their 3-year-old from day care, her husband, Sam, discovers that she has mysteriously disappeared. Enter a cast of friends, neighbors and relatives — many of whom may know more than they’re saying. Every scoff, every cry of anguish and every speech of outrage or despair is perfectly executed to keep listeners tied to this riveting plot.
Read the review here.
The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths
Read by Julie Maisey | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Penguin Audio | 9.75 hrs.]
Julie Maisey brings verve and well-chosen characterizations to her performance of Griffiths’s latest mystery. A departure from Griffiths’s successful series featuring archaeologist Ruth Galloway, this new audiobook introduces Ali Dawson and a group of current-day investigators who travel in time. History-oriented instead of science-focused, the story is well researched and fun. Maisey narrates with clarity and enthusiasm, enjoying and enlivening the character-driven plot.
Read the review here.
Homemaker: Prairie Nightingale, Book 1 by Annie Mare, Ruthie Knox
Read by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Brilliance Audio | 10.75 hrs.]
Mia Hutchinson-Shaw’s narration of the first book in this cozy mystery series is delightful. She brings a warm, engaging tone to the story of Prairie Nightingale, a divorced homemaker with two daughters. Her neighbors might call her a busybody, but Prairie’s insatiable curiosity drives her to investigate when her neighbor, popular mom and entrepreneur Lisa Radcliffe, goes missing. Hutchinson-Shaw’s performance captures Prairie’s genuinely good intentions and heartfelt nature even as she uncovers her Wisconsin neighbors’ dark secrets.
Read the review here.
The Salmon Cannon And The Levitating Frog: And Other Serious Discoveries of Silly Science by Carly Anne York
Read by Eileen Stevens | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Hachette Audio | 6.5 hrs.]
Curiosity-driven research has led to discoveries in a number of unexpected areas, such as landmine-detecting rats, fish cannons using pneumatic technology to transport fish, mantis shrimp “fight clubs” and duck sex. Narrator Eileen Stevens strikes an upbeat and engaged tone as she chronicles these and other experiments that have led to scientific progress both in the area of animal behavior and science, and in discoveries that have led to progress in human development, such as penicillin and pregnancy testing.
Read the review here.
Cry For Me, Argentina: My Life As a Failed Child Star by Tamara Yajia
Read by Tamara Yajia | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Bloomsbury Publishing | 6.75 hrs.]
Comedian Tamara Yajia narrates her debut memoir with dynamic energy. Her stories of her childhood in Argentina feature her hilarious yet often inappropriate Jewish family. After they move to the U.S., her grandfather’s declining health brings them back to Argentina. Inspired by Madonna, Yajia almost becomes a child star, but an economic crisis forces another move to America, causing instability in her life. Yajia invites us to laugh with her through her shrewd observations of the absurdity and dysfunction of her childhood.
Read the review here.
An Inside Job by Daniel Silva
Read by Edoardo Ballerini | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harper Audio | 9.5 hrs.]
Golden Voice Edoardo Ballerini narrates art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon’s latest adventure, set largely in Italy and the Vatican. Ballerini’s lyrical pronunciation of Italian proper names and places showcases the beauty of the Italian language. Listeners are swept into the intrigue surrounding the discovery and loss of a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, a situation that places both Allon and the Pope in danger. Ballerini expertly differentiates the many characters and is particularly adept at voicing the women in the fast-paced action.
Read the review here.
Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life by Dan Nadel
Read by Rob Shapiro | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 16.5 hrs.]
Artist Robert Crumb did the impossible — he turned the medium of comic books into something both inspiring and repellent while securing a place in comic history. Rob Shapiro’s understated delivery of this authorized biography is as captivating as Crumb’s bizarre life. Listening to it will make people seek out not only Crumb’s work in Zap Comix, Fritz The Cat and others, but also the works of the artists he admired who influenced his unique style.
Read the review here.
A Resistance Of Witches by Morgan Ryan
Read by Grace Gray | AudioFile Earphones Award
[Penguin Audio | 13.25 hrs.]
Grace Gray narrates this WWII historical fantasy from the perspectives of three characters: Lydia Polk, a British woman who recently graduated from the Royal Academy of Witches; Rebecca Gagne, a Jewish resistance fighter in France; and Henry Boudreaux, a Haitian American art historian with a little magic of his own. Lydia must enlist the help of Rebecca and Henry to obtain a dark-magic grimoire capable of mass destruction before a coven of Nazi witches claims it. Gray is an absolute master of accents.
Read the review here.
