The lively cast of Front Desk returns with narrator Sunny Lu, adding much-appreciated continuity. A relative audiobook newbie, Lu proves her expertise in ciphering middle graders to middle-aged adults. That she’s also an attorney makes the lawyers here – both the pompous and the heroic –...
SIXTY-EIGHT narrators get credited with creating the aural spectacle of Neil Gaiman’s legendary graphic epic. Debuting officially in 1989, the original comic series concluded in 1996, although reprints, compilations, adaptations, and spin-offs have as never ceased. Among the vast cast – quite possibly the largest...
On her 15th birthday, Janey's mother confesses that her thought-to-be-sperm-banked father is actually a real person still living in the southern Iowa town from which her mother escaped by going to New York City to "give her coming daughter a better life." Janey ignores her...
Best Audiobooks of 2020 by Stephanie Klose and Terry Hong This year’s top audiobooks, selected by LJ’s audio editor and reviewers, represent the best recorded literature published between November 2019 and December 2020. In a year that’s been like no other, these picks moved us, provided escape, and...
Emiko Jean: Searching for Belonging When Emiko Jean isn't writing, she's reading. Before she became a writer, she was an entomologist, a candlemaker, a florist, and most recently, a teacher. She is the author of Empress of All Seasons and We'll Never Be Apart. In her third novel, Tokyo Ever After (Flatiron...
After finding success with a psychological thriller, then a historical fantasy, Emiko Jean turns to contemporary romance with absolutely delightful aplomb. While the "I'm really a princess" trope is an enduringly popular narrative theme, Jean's effervescent third novel, Tokyo Ever After, is a fresh, funny, emotive,...
While Asha Lemmie's debut – about the tribulations of an illegitimate, mixed-race granddaughter of a cousin to the royal Japanese family – might not be perfect, she certainly deserves better than this lazy aural travesty. Floundering, misrepresentative audiobook adaptations have been rerecorded and rereleased –...
Tony-nominated Broadway star Megan Hilty proves to be an ideal narrator, effortlessly assuming (almost-)always-in-control Dannie and her free-spirited best friend, Bella. In the evening after a near-perfect day – accepting the perfectly orchestrated marriage proposal after wowing her interviewers for her ideal job – Dannie...
*STARRED REVIEW Seasoned narrator Barrie Kreinik showcases her prowess as a dialect coach as she embodies Charlotte McConaghy’s vast cast around the world from Australia to Ireland to Greenland, traversing quickly emptying terrains and oceans. Making her adult fiction debut, McConaghy introduces Franny Stone, an untethered...
*STARRED REVIEW "Accra is the perfect setting for noir fiction," writes Nana-Ama Danquah (Willow Weep for Me), Ghanaian American editor of this volume for Akashic Book's long-running Noir series. Hardly an endorsement for tourism, this spine-chilling 13-story collection offers an opportunity to "consider the context, beware...
*STARRED REVIEW “Exceptional” is the only word for such a confluence of multiple #OwnVoices as the trifecta of trans Arab artists (author, character, and narrator) gathered to create this audible literary feast. In alternating epistolary chapters set decades apart, trans activist Samy Figaredo (making their audio...
In her extraordinary fiction debut, The Opium Prince, Afghan Swedish academic and communications expert Jasmine Aimaq, who lives in Canada, combines elements of literary thriller, sociopolitical exposé, and historical witnessing. The Afghan people lived in relative – albeit tense – balance between the 1973 coup d'etat...
*STARRED REVIEW Wall Street Journal correspondent Te-Ping Chen emerges as a fiction powerhouse, each of her 10 stories an immersive literary event. “Lulu,” which first appeared in the New Yorker, is a tale about the diverging life paths of twins, the overachieving daughter and the slacker...
*STARRED REVIEW Narrating the fourth of her own books, Sue Miller doesn’t so much perform as empathically embody her 13th title – the result is an aural gift to her avid readers. Three decades into Graham and Annie’s marriage, Graham unexpectedly dies in his sleep. He...
Almost a decade since her debut collection, This Is Not Your City, Caitlin Horrocks returns with Life Among the Terranauts. The majority of these 14 stories deliver a gut-punch reminder of the seeming unavoidability of loneliness and isolation, despite the promises of coupledom, familial bonds, and understood...
*STARRED REVIEW A dead woman opens Catherine Adel West’s startling, haunting debut. Two fathers, two daughters, and the building that is Chicago’s Calvary Hope Christian Church will unravel her unfortunate murder, revealing generations of secrets and violence that culminate in young Ruby King cradling her mother...
*STARRED REVIEW Newbie narrator Keong Sim – who, although born in Vietnam, shares Korean American heritage with Mike Jung – has less than a handful of audio credits, but his effervescent energy is a perfect match for Jung’s rollicking, heartwarming MG buddy epic. Matt and Eric are...
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, his Sherlock Holmes legacy comprised four novels and 56 stories. Sherlock has since become an unstoppable literary institution, proliferating across mediums; although his archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty, only appeared in six of Doyle’s original works, his own...
*STARRED REVIEW Born 10 months apart, September and July are the kind of sisters who don’t require words to communicate. Older September is clearly in charge, having trained July over years of playing “September says.” Something terrible has happened at their Oxford school, causing their mother,...
*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, when the father was a young boy – the same age as his young son now – he wanted to be a crossing guard. After that, he wanted to be a writer. “‘And now you are one!’” the son gleefully...
