“I bet everybody sets at least one world record without even knowing it,” claims Guy Delisle’s sister in the titular short. Sure, such records can’t be verified, but “thanks to the magic of comics, [Delisle’s] done the verifications” to showcase random record holders for never...
Marco, Chiara remembers of her close friend, “was not afraid ...
*STARRED REVIEW Kimberly Farr is clearly Elizabeth Strout’s chosen voice, now reading the fourth of the Amgash series featuring Lucy Barton. It’s March 2020. Lucy’s first husband William convinces her to leave New York City for Maine. “I did not know that one of my friends...
Shashi Bhat's dedication for her potent second novel, The Most Precious Substance on Earth, speaks volumes: "For the girls who stay quiet." Turn the page to an epigraph from Sophocles: "Silence is a woman's best garment." Bhat's protagonist – a Canadian of Indian background like herself...
What happens in The Days of Afrekete, the second novel by Asali Solomon (Disgruntled), takes just an evening: Liselle Belmont prepares for and hosts a dinner party to thank her husband Winn's loyal supporters, despite a failed political campaign. But Solomon deftly expands the defining event...
*STARRED REVIEW Marin Ireland has a mere couple dozen audio credits – the majority of them in the last few years – yet she’s undoubtedly one of the industry’s most versatile, consistently stupendous narrators. Returning for her third Fredrick Backman pairing, Ireland superbly brings to life...
Youthful romance has made Mary H.K. Choi (Permanent Record; Emergency Contact) a bestselling #OwnVoices author. In Yolk, she effectively pivots toward the familial, focusing the most significant of the book's relationships on two Seoul-born, San Antonio-raised sisters. Devoted audiences need not worry here about missing a love...
At almost 15 hours, Uganda-born, UK-domiciled Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s (Kintu) Ganda folklore-infused sophomore title is a sprawling epic with a vast cast that challenges, even occasionally derails, a seasoned narrator like Tovah Ott (Ott’s credits seem few, but under two additional aliases, she’s commanded hundreds...
Members Only, the first novel by Sameer Pandya (author of the story collection The Blind Writer), is as provocative as it is comedic. In a horribly misguided attempt to bond with the first people of color since his own admission into a suburban Los Angeles tennis...
Narrators Joy Osmanski and Jacques Roy prove to be convincing partners in propelling two awkward misfits toward each other. Osmanski’s Penny Lee is slightly detached. UT-Austin might be less than 80 miles away, but 18-year-old Penny imagines she’s headed for a whole new world –...
Three residents of a three-floor Tel Aviv apartment building reveal what really goes on behind closed doors. First-floor-domiciled Arnon tells an old army buddy that his young daughter was abused by their neighbor, his marriage is suffering, and the neighbor’s teenage Parisian granddaughter is about...
*STARRED REVIEW Walter Forrester, a self-described "stubborn old man" without living relatives, contacts Alaska museum curator Joshua Sloan with an offer to donate numerous effects of his great-uncle Lt. Col. Allen Forrester and Forrester's wife, Sophie. In 1885, Allen Forrester embarked on a formidable mission to chart...
