Following the success of her lauded “We Set the Dark on Fire” duology, Tehlor Kay Mejia makes her middle grade debut, proving mothers are always right, ghosts exist, and La Llorona is legit. From 12 to eternal, desperate parent to dismissive cop, madwoman to murderer,...
*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, Louis Chude-Sokei's parents were known as "the JFK and Jackie O of Biafra," a former West African nation "that had disappeared or been 'killed.'" Half a century later, Chude-Sokei examines what it meant to be "the first son of the...
Back in 1977, “Anacostia was still the New World, an isle of blood and desire.” In Washington, DC-native Morowa Yejidé’s (Time of the Locust, 2014) moody, bleak sophomore title, boundaries between the living and the dead are indiscernible. Once upon a time, Nephthys and Osiris...
That Danielle Geller survived to write Dog Flowers seems miraculous. Her raw debut might need a content warning: abandonment, alcoholism, attempted suicide, domestic violence, parental incarcerations, family deaths – much of which is intrinsically linked to her enigmatic, missing mother. In bearing elegiac witness to...
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 –...
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 –...
*STARRED REVIEW Laila Lalami dovetails her own journey as a Morocco-born, UK-and US-educated, naturalized Muslim American, expanding into a socio-historical examination of what it means to be a “conditional citizen” in the United States. Conditional citizens, she explains, “are Americans who cannot enjoy the full rights,...
*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...
Both Susan Dalian and Jay Aaseng are relatively new narrators, but theirs is no novice performance of historical romance novelist Alyssa Cole’s first thriller. The pair alternates bearing witness to the aggressive gentrification erasing a historically Black Brooklyn neighborhood by wealthy white families and investors. Dalian’s...
*STARRED REVIEW Although Thai Italian artist Elisa Macellari’s Kusama (2020) hit U.S. shelves first, Papaya Salad is actually her debut title, originally published in 2018 in her native Italy. Introducing her tale as “a story the protagonist told me when I was a child and which I stumbled across...
Friends from infancy, Jamie and Maya haven’t seen each other in almost 10 years – until food-related fiascos (runaway tangelos, tipped-over soggy pastries) lead to an awkward reunion. Both now 17, white Jewish Jamie has grown up shy, clumsy, and especially wary of public speaking....
What a striking confluence here: National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi’s co-writer, Yusef Salaam, was one of the Exonerated Five. Debut narrator Ethan Herisse portrayed the teenage Salaam in Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed dramatization of the aftermath of the Central Park jogger attack, When They See...
Welcome back to a new year at Riverdale Academy Day (RAD) School in Jerry Craft's entertaining follow-up to his 2020 Newbery Medal-winning debut, New Kid. Wannabe artist Jordan reunites with his closest friends: Liam, who arrives from his family's Riverdale mansion via chauffeur, and Drew, who...
Edited by memoirist and essayist Cinelle Barnes, A Measure of Belonging gathers 21 "established and emerging" writers of color with Southern ties – by birth, immigration, relocation. The resulting collection examines, defines, and confronts the idea of belonging. A highlight is Carnegie Medal-winner Kiese Laymon's (Heavy)...
In writing her now-classic The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), Pulitzer-Prized (and first Black woman so honored) Isabel Wilkerson reveals in her highly anticipated follow-up, “while working on ...
If the narrator sounds immediately familiar, here’s why: Danielle Macdonald played Willowdean Dickson in the popular Netflix adaptation of Julie Murphy’s bestselling Dumplin'. Making her narrator debut in Jennifer Weiner’s plus-size empowering latest, Macdonald is so convincing that once listeners have begun the story, stopping...
*STARRED REVIEW British-born to a Greek Cypriot mother and Jamaican father, Dean Atta established himself as a poet and performer in 2012. Here he gorgeously debuts as both author and narrator of his novel-in-verse in which his fictional stand-in, Michael Angeli, matures from an end-of-the-millennium baby...
*STARRED REVIEW What you might miss if you opt for the audiobook is a rather unexpected table of contents page, on which every chapter title is a (western) literary classic, from The Picture of Dorian Gray to The Iliad. Books, indeed, guide debut author Phuc Tran’s life, especially as...
*STARRED REVIEW Brit Bennett was widely awarded for The Mothers (2016), and her highly-anticipated sophomore title – regardless of medium – won’t disappoint. With exacting nuance, narrator Shayna Small immediately distinguishes one Vignes twin sister from the other. Desiree, the “fidgety twin...
Dreaming the Impossible Even before Kelli Jo Ford's debut, Crooked Hallelujah was released, it garnered accolades: the seventh chapter, "Hybrid Vigor," won the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize in 2019, and Ford's pre-publication manuscript won the 2019 Everett Southwest Literary Award from the University of Central Oklahoma. Ford is...
