13 unpausable audiobooks Archives

Good Dirt

by Charmaine Wilkerson

In her follow-up to her blockbuster debut Black Cake, Wilkerson again explores grief, trauma, and social justice issues through the lens of one family and its precious heirloom. Ebony “Ebby” Freeman, the twenty-nine-year-old daughter of an affluent Black New England family, suffers a painful and public romantic betrayal in the opening pages. She flees to France to heal but can’t escape the pull to untangle past events—both her recent humiliation and her still-unanswered questions from a trauma she suffered two decades prior. In an alternating timeline, Wilkerson lays out the history of the family’s heirloom stoneware pot and each generation that has possessed it, ever since it was first thrown by an enslaved master craftsman. I couldn’t wait to find out what would happen to Ebby and her ancestors.

The Eighth Life

by Nino Haratischvili

I first gushed about this to the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club in our Best Books of the Summer 2021 event. This was the Georgian novel that I didn't know my life was missing. I listened to it on audio, somewhat begrudgingly. Several people had told me it was really amazing, but golly it's long at 1000+ pages. I plunged in, hoping I wouldn't regret it. And very quickly could not wait to find out what happened next in these peoples' lives. It's a generational story, tracking 100 years in a Georgian family who fan out across Europe and the world as they seek to run from the horrors of what's unfolding in the Soviet Union. The family also has a magical chocolate recipe that they mix up at opportune moments, but whether it's a blessing or a curse remains to be seen for the 95 or so years. The ending is amazing.

Chirp

Run for the Hills

by Kevin Wilson

Wilson deftly combines the heavy and the light in this found family story of four scattered half-siblings who meet for the first time and pile into an old PT Cruiser to go find the father who abandoned them long ago. Wilson’s stories often feel larger than life, yet the emotional heart feels real and relatable. Quirky, warm, and bighearted, with a multigenerational cast and road trip hijinks galore. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s no spoiler to say I found this coast-to-coast adventure to be an utter delight.

Wrong Place Wrong Time

by Gillian McAllister

This was the best kind of brain bender! In the opening pages of this time travel mystery, a British woman watches in horror from her window as her 18-year-old son stabs a man on the street. A horrific scene ensues, the police take him away, she spends the evening at the station in shock and agony. But then Jen wakes up the next morning, only to find that it’s not the next morning at all, but the day before the crime occurred. When she wakes up the next morning, it’s the day before that. Jen seems to be living her life backward, and—with the help of a physicist friend-of-a-friend—determines that the only way to break out of the time loop is to “undo” whatever event put her son on the path to murder. To do that she has to go far, far back in time, getting to the roots of her most important relationships. This may end up on my best of the year list; it will certainly be one of my most enjoyable reading experiences.

Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

by Sarah Polley

Actor and director Sarah Polley’s memoir-in-essays knocked my socks off. It’s a clear-eyed examination of painful memories from her personal life and decades-long career, ranging from scoliosis to high-risk pregnancy to sexual assault. The title comes courtesy of a concussion specialist who treated Polley and advised her on how to rewire and ultimately heal the pathways in her brain by confronting whatever caused her discomfort. That same approach is used skillfully in each essay. The audiobook as narrated by the author was the right book at the right time for me.

The Hotel Nantucket

by Elin Hilderbrand

Hilderbrand’s beach reads are always enjoyable but this one is notable for introducing me to a new favorite pen. The titular hotel’s Gilded Age glory days are long gone: it’s a real dump (and in a fun plot twist—haunted!) when London billionaire Xavier Darling buys it sight unseen. The new owner hires local restaurateur Lizbet Keaton to make his hotel the best property on the island, if not the whole Eastern seaboard. And that means The Hotel Nantucket has to wow Shelly Carpenter, the influencer who’s become a national obsession for her blog Hotel Confidential. The influential critic regularly reviews hotels for her eighteen million followers and awards each property anywhere from one to five keys. The staff is energized by this audacious goal, because no hotel has ever earned five keys from Shelly Carpenter. To earn the coveted fifth key, they’ll have to do everything right. Super fun, and I especially enjoyed the ghost story element!

Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain

by Andrew McCarthy

Our team member Ginger raved about this book ... and then when I was looking for an audiobook Will and I could listen to together on our way to the beach, I realized the walk in question takes place on Spain's Camino de Santiago. Will and I were actively anticipating our upcoming trip to Spain, so the timing was perfect! This is the real-time account of the Brat Pack actor's 500-mile walk across Spain with his 19-year-old son Sam, detailing the pair's reasons for embarking on the trip, their long, hot days spent walking—sometimes upwards of 20 miles a day—in the hot summer sun, the fellow walkers they meet along the way, the food they eat, the coffee they drink, the inns they sleep in, what they talk about along the way. We rarely listen to audiobooks together and enjoyed this one so much. The narration was especially good: the elder McCarthy reads the majority but son Sam frequently adds his own voice, which made for a wonderful listening experience.

The Rachel Incident

by Caroline O'Donoghue

This is the book I can't stop recommending! I picked this up on a whim and am so glad I did: the novel reads like a warmer, wittier Sally Rooney, perfect for fans of introspective first-person literary fiction. When the novel begins, Rachel is living in London, happily married and pregnant, when she hears the news that one of her old long-ago college professors is in a coma. (This beginning reminds me of one of my favorite novels, This Must Be the Place.) This discovery prompts her to recall a pivotal year in her early twenties, when she met her best friend James working at the bookstore and their lives soon became enmeshed with those of the professor and his wife. A provocative novel with an enticing plot that thoughtfully interrogates themes of power, class, art, and the queer experience; I adored the Irish accents in Tara Flynn's excellent narration.

Trust

by Hernan Diaz

Literary historical fiction that is a book within a book within a book, weaving a tangled web of power, wealth, and deceit. While many Americans struggled after the Wall Street crash of 1929, Benjamin and Helen Rask flourished. The popular novel Bonds, published in 1937, details their privileged upbringing, excessive lifestyle, and the cost of acquiring their fortune. But Bonds might not be the whole story or the right one. Fans of epistolary literature will appreciate the four-part structure of a novel, autobiography draft, memoir by the biographer, and diary excerpts. Every time you think you know the story, it transforms into something else.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir

by Ina Garten

Ina Garten’s much-anticipated memoir was certainly on my radar but wasn’t necessarily a priority read. But then I found myself in need of a new audiobook on October 1, the memoir’s actual release day. I downloaded the audiobook on a whim and couldn’t stop listening to Ina narrate her own story. I listened to much of it in the car on a rather stressful solo road trip, and found Ina to be the perfect traveling companion: chatty, engaging, and soothing all at once. Maybe you should take my words with a grain of salt because I’m by no means a superfan: I have a few Ina Garten cookbooks, I’ve had good luck with her recipes, I’ve seen a few snippets of her tv show while vacationing someplace with all the channels. I’m not a student of Everything Ina—but golly I loved this memoir.

A Song to Drown Rivers

by Ann Liang

Bestselling YA author Liang makes her adult debut with a plotty, romantically-laced historical fantasy based on the ancient legend of Xishi, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China. Xishi’s beauty is renowned throughout the land, but when the king’s military advisor discovers she is also brave, she is recruited to use that beauty as a weapon in service of her people. Driven by her sense of duty, she consents, agreeing to spy on the enemy kingdom of Wu by becoming their reviled king’s concubine: her job is to make the man she loathes fall in love with her. A page-turning epic that thoughtfully examines the complexities of womanhood, the horrors of war, the obstacles to love, and even the nature of fame. Heads up for audiophiles: the audiobook narrated by Natalie Naudus is excellent.

Colored Television

by Danzy Senna

This darkly comic satire centers on a Los Angeles-based novelist named Jane who is tired of pouring herself into her work only to barely make ends meet. L.A. is expensive—especially with two kids—and novel writing just doesn't pay. Jane decides she wants to "sell out" like her friend Brett and become a screenwriter, with its predictable hours and paychecks. But when Jane makes one tiny lie in order to secure a gig, it leads to a bigger one, then a bigger one—and it's only a matter of time before her precarious house of cards comes crashing down. This was smart, funny, and packed with insider-y publishing mischief. Fun fact: Senza is married to novelist Percival Everett, and she draws on her own life experience in sooo many ways in this (fictional) story. I initially tried this in print and it just didn't stick but once I switched to the audiobook narrated by Kristen Ariza, I breezed right through it!

The History of Sound: Stories

by Ben Shattuck

While reading this tightly interconnected collection of short stories ranging from 1700s Nantucket to present day New England, I gasped each time I experienced a new way Shattuck played one off another. Shattuck explains in the epigraph that the dozen stories are styled as a “hook-and-chain” poem: they are presented as pairs, with the second story providing a new perspective or fresh insight on what was shared in the first. The first and last stories serve as corresponding bookends, with the bracketed ten stories also divided into complementary pairings. This is the best short story collection I've read in ages and I suspect it could happily stand up to multiple rereadings. I’m so glad I read it via audiobook thanks to the full cast, which included Ed Helms, Paul Mescal, Jenny Slate, and Nick Offerman reading me stories.

13 unpausable audiobooks

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