Just before Grandma died in Amsterdam, Sylvie temporarily rejoined the Tan family to say goodbye. Grandma had been living with the Tans: Ma’s cousin Helena, husband Willem, their son Lukas – for decades. For her first nine years, Sylvie, too, had been the Tans’ responsibility,...
With Spanish names, phrases, and whole sentences appearing every few pages, bilingual narrator Yaeli Arizmendi (the voice of Laura Esquivel’s Spanish editions) instinctively settles into Oscar Cásares’s (Amigoland) latest, in which he returns to his Tex-Mex border hometown of Brownsville. Almost-septuagenarian Nina’s life is not her...
So you’re gonna find some conventional tropes here: mousy librarian, selfless sister/selfish sister, domineering father/submissive mother, free-spirited granny, mysterious guardian angel. But before your rolling eyeballs get stuck, two words on why you need to listen: Imogen Church! Perhaps best known for voicing clever thrillers...
For those looking for alternate therapies, the Miracle Submarine in Miracle Creek, Virginia, provides HBOT – hyperbaric oxygen therapy – believed to treat such conditions as autism and infertility. Despite the many ‘miracles,’ the venture is anything but: a mysterious explosion kills two patients and...
Laila Lalami’s stupendous fourth title showcases a chorus of nine Rashomon-esque characters dealing with the hit-and-run death of a Moroccan immigrant diner owner in a California Mojave Desert town. That the novel gets a nine-member full cast (with who’s-who credits at recording’s end!), including some...
Brown lives get overlooked, trampled, dismissed, and destroyed in Matt Mendez’s searing YA debut, set in his El Paso, Texas hometown. Timothy Andrés Pabon – his voice aptly mimicking a teen who’s not quite fully mature – opens in “Chapter Juan” as should-be high school...
Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker – both masterful epistolary novelists – couldn’t have imagined how today’s virtual communication would become an ideal medium to tell a story about ...
Author Devi S. Laskar knows what it’s like to have a police gun pointed at her. In 2010, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation raided her home when her professor husband was wrongly accused of misusing university funds. They confiscated her laptop, on which was stored...
During summer 2005, when “the American war was sort of dozing,” 12-year-old Marwand, his brother, and mother arrived in Logar, Afghanistan to visit extended family. The six years since Marwand’s last visit from the U.S. isn’t enough for Budabash – more wolf than dog –...
With the right posh British accent, even lying, cheating, and all sorts of promiscuity somehow don’t seem as unforgivable. Life, death, and plenty of bed-swapping happen in Tessa Hadley’s latest, elucidated by English actor Abigail Thaw, who reads with such perfect enunciation and elegant control...
In Fiona Barton’s third “Kate Waters” full-audio-cast thriller, Susan Duerden assumes tenacious journalist Kate Waters from Mandy Williams who previously voiced Kate in The Widow and The Child. This time the mystery gets personal – and far-flung. Two British teens traveling in Thailand turn up as victims in...
He’s been called “Twitter Monk” and “mega-Monk” for his million-plus followers. That his Berkeley/Harvard Divinity Master’s/Princeton PhD-pedigree plus seven years professor-ing at Hampshire College led him to become a world-famous Buddhist monk seems an unlikely path. Yet his success only spreads with Imperfect, his follow-up to...
Originally from Somalia, Mugdi and Gacalo have now spent the majority of their lives in Norway, where they’ve been productive citizens, raising two children. Their quiet, middle-aged calm is shattered when their son Dhaqaneh commits a suicide bombing in Somalia. Gacalo’s only way forward after the...
In his mid-60s, Myshkin is finally about to understand what he’s been yearning to know almost his entire life. Since age 9, he’s been “known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman,” never mind that he is actually German. Except for...
“In the aging port city of an island nation near the start of the new millennium,” Idra Novey (Ways to Disappear) introduces her taut, haunting novel, giving it a foreboding sense of taking place anywhere close, anytime near. Student activist Maria P. has been dead...
*STARRED REVIEW No doubt that Sylvain Neuvel’s (Themis Files series) standalone novella is a thought-provoking, heartbeat-raising experience. As convincing as the narrative is on the page, Neil Shah alchemizes Neuvel’s words into a revelatory performance, infusing contagious energy and creating impressive resonance. Sometime in the not-so-distant future,...
“Choosing to live is an act of defiance, a form of heroism,” Lale assures his lover Gita. The pair are both Slovakian Jews, trapped in the hell of Auschwitz-Birkenau. As the death camp’s Tätowierer – the tattooist who scars prisoners with everlasting numbers – Lale...
*STARRED REVIEW The son of a Yorkshire pig farmer, Maurice Swift is his family’s black sheep, and will do whatever it takes to succeed. That “whatever” means escaping rural England for West Berlin where he meets visiting writer Erich Ackermann, who provides Maurice his first authorial...
YouTube star Alex Bertie readily admits “that as far as trans people go, I’m very privileged. I’m a white educated male with family support, a roof over my head, and a job.” Being British also guaranteed access to a national health system that paid for...
*STARRED REVIEW Adroitly adapting her deep, mellifluous voice across continents, decades, ages, and genders, Mozhan Marnò flawlessly embodies Marjan Kamali’s (Together Tea, 2013) stupendous sophomore title about young lovers torn apart by class, politics, and history during the violent tumult of 1950s Iran. A Tehran stationery...
