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Mari Carlson

NonfictionAudioBiography

All In

Review by Mari Carlson

In her autobiography, All In (18 hours), Billie Jean King tells of her triumphs and struggles both on and off the tennis court, from her hardscrabble childhood in Long Beach, California, to her present-day life in New York City.

Growing up in the 1960s, King’s inquisitive and rebellious spirit reflected the era, as she refused to wear white skirts as a young player. Later, she launched the Women’s Tennis Association and built a career with her husband and business partner. But years of keeping her sexual orientation a secret took a toll on King, physically and emotionally. Her book celebrates the honesty, hard work and love that bolstered her and encouraged her to fight for inclusion and equity.  

In the energetic audio production, King brings her punchy, passionate personality to her percussive narration. Her voice is compassionate and down-to-earth as she relates her experiences of forging relationships with a colorful cast of characters who have joined her in her journey. In moments of pain and joy, King connects deeply with her audience through audible tears and laughter, culminating in an inspiring and cathartic listening experience.

In the energetic audiobook edition of her autobiography, Billie Jean King connects deeply with her audience through audible tears and laughter.
NonfictionAudioBlack History

We Are Each Other’s Harvest

Review by Mari Carlson

The audiobook of Natalie Baszile’s We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy (13.5 hours) explores farming by Black Americans, past and present, through essays, interviews and poetry from farmers and historians, wordsmiths and activists. The expansive project, born out of Baszile’s extensive research for her 2014 novel, Queen Sugar, is bookended by the author’s own words about her family and her creative process. In between, we learn about the Black community’s enduring connection to the land despite slavery’s disenfranchisement and northern and urban migration, among other factors.

Tina Lifford, an actor in the TV adaptation of Queen Sugar as well as the series “Parenthood” and “South Central,” captures the book’s soulful tone through her deep voice, slow delivery and an array of accents. Her performance pays tribute to the Black community’s oral history tradition, which is referenced throughout the book. 

With rich descriptions of crops, recipes, family meals and current efforts to revitalize Black farming and land ownership, this audiobook inspires, empowers and enlightens through the spoken word.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of the print version of We Are Each Other’s Harvest.

With rich descriptions of crops, recipes, family meals and more, this audiobook inspires, empowers and enlightens through spoken word.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Sweetness of Water

Review by Mari Carlson

Nathan Harris’ Civil War-set debut novel, The Sweetness of Water, paints a timeless portrait of warring factions seeking peace.

As the novel opens, white landowner George Walker encounters brothers Landry and Prentiss, recently freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, on the outreaches of his property. George invites the brothers to join him as paid laborers on his Georgia peanut farm, which incites the ire of his rural neighbors. George’s wife, Isabelle, expects his interest in the brothers to wane, like it has toward all his other ventures. But George proves her wrong. 

Work on the farm is well underway when the Walkers’ son, Caleb, unexpectedly returns from war. As a deserter, Caleb gives the town one more reason to dislike the Walkers. A fiery standoff ensues, after which Isabelle emerges as a quiet heroine pursuing ideals of friendship, liberty and justice.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: For the audiobook edition, William DeMeritt performs with such skill that the listener will be able to envision Nathan Harris’ character’s faces just by the way their voices sound.

There is a shared longing at the heart of Harris’ novel. Caleb and Prentiss both love people they can’t have. Landry is continually drawn to and inspired by a stone fountain on the plantation from which he escaped. To him the fountain conveys majesty and magic, comfort and joy, “something mysterious and fine . . . operat[ing] endlessly. On and on, just like life.” George, too, is driven by something he can’t capture; he searches for the elusive source of his restlessness, represented by a mythical beast he’s sure abides in the forest.

Harris draws readers into this sense of longing by exploring silences: George’s meditative hunts, Landry’s muteness, Caleb’s hidden trysts, Prentiss’ pent-up anger and Isabelle’s secluded mourning. Insinuating dialogue, delivered with eloquent Southern reserve, and hostile eruptions between the Walker household and the Confederates explore the flip side of silence.

Celebrating all manner of relationships that combat hate, this novel is a hopeful glimpse into the long legacy of American racial and civil tensions.  

Nathan Harris’ Civil War-set debut novel celebrates all manner of relationships that combat hate.
NonfictionAudioSelf-Help

Professional Troublemaker

Review by Mari Carlson

Luvvie Ajayi Jones’ Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual (8 hours) is a candid, can-do guide to making the world a better place by cultivating a better you. Narrated by the bestselling author, three sections—“Be,” “Say” and “Do”—detail steps toward understanding the core of yourself and making decisions based on those crucial personal values. Jones describes her own process and experiences, draws inspiration from her Nigerian heritage and shows what it looks like to live authentically in a judgmental world, with her grandmother as her favorite example.

Famous for her blog posts, podcast and TED Talks, Jones will hype up even the most fearful listener with her commanding, cheerful voice. She recommends that professional-troublemakers-in-the-making find friends or aunties to “gas [them] up” and cheer them on in their journey, and for the length of this audiobook, she is that friend. With special audio-only features such as a recording of Jones’ aunt speaking in Yoruba, it is impossible not to be won over by Professional Troublemaker’s empowering message that fighting fear is finding freedom.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of the print version of Professional Troublemaker.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones’ commanding, cheerful voice will hype up even the most fearful listener.
NonfictionAudio

Dusk, Night, Dawn

Review by Mari Carlson

From the veteran author of such uplifting books as Help, Thanks, Wow and Hallelujah Anyway comes Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage (4 hours), a collection of essays addressing hope in a time of unrest. Touching on topics that range from climate change and political divisiveness to the COVID-19 pandemic and her own recent marriage, Anne Lamott concerns herself less with offering solutions than with pointing to the earth’s dependable rhythms for signs of hope.

Lamott narrates the audiobook, and her gently warbling voice pairs well with the vibrant words she uses, such as sag, plop and love, to create a comforting aural atmosphere. She describes reaching out to friends during times of trouble, and her voice is like that of a friend, warm and supportive and slightly melancholic. Her essays are humorous, with metaphors of Life Saver candies and junk food, as well as profound, as when she reaches into biblical narratives and her own experiences to cull ageless wisdom and provide sage encouragement for future generations. This audiobook is the soundtrack for feeling better in the midst of a troubled landscape.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Anne Lamott shares some ideas for how to get by when the world seems especially dark.

Anne Lamott’s narration of Dusk, Night, Dawn is the soundtrack for feeling better in the midst of a troubled landscape.
Science Fiction & FantasyAudioFantasy

The Witch’s Heart

Review by Mari Carlson

In Genevieve Gornichec’s fantasy novel, The Witch’s Heart (12 hours), Angrboda has been burned three times for performing witchcraft, but she remains alive at the edges of the mythical Ironwood, where she begins a lasting, tenuous relationship with the trickster god Loki, Odin’s half brother. But Ragnarok, the destruction of the known world, threatens their future—and the future of their unusual offspring.

Jayne Entwistle, best known for her narration of the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley, brings Angrboda to life with a husky, sage voice and northern English lilt. Her comforting tone and gentle pacing reinforce the novel’s focus on Angrboda’s domestic challenges in the shadow of cosmic conflicts. Accents used to delineate characters create a lively cast of women and men who visit Angrboda in her forest hovel. As many listeners will want to continue this dive into Norse mythology, a helpful list of resources for further reading follows the narration.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Genevieve Gornichec on writing The Witch’s Heart when she should have been writing a term paper.

Jayne Entwistle, best known for her narration of the Flavia de Luce series, brings Angrboda to life with a husky, sage voice and northern English lilt.
FictionSpeculative Fiction

Creatures of Passage

Review by Mari Carlson

In Creatures of Passage, 10-year-old Dash Kinwell is stuck, unsure how to proceed after witnessing the school’s merry janitor, Mercy, commit an act of molestation.

The novel’s setting of 1977 Anacostia, in the southeast quadrant of Washington, D.C., is magical and liquid, and so is author Morowa Yejidé’s storytelling style. Sequences flow between past, present and future, between concrete and fantastical, in a stream of vignettes. States are “kingdoms,” the Suitland Parkway is “the imaginable forest,” cars drive themselves and giant vegetables grow at night. Subtle clues hint at how the plot fuses together, emerging amid enjoyable sketches of characters such as Find Out, a man who can locate anything in his junkyard (and beyond). 

The adults around Dash wander “with burdens that [keep] them frozen even as they [move] from one place to the next.” His great-aunt Nephthys ferries passengers around in her 1967 Plymouth, a ghost thumping around in the trunk. Osiris, Nephthys’ deceased twin brother, journeys through death only to arrive back at the banks of the river where his body was recovered, and where he now visits with Dash. Dash’s reclusive mom, Amber, sees future catastrophes in her dreams, and they’re recorded in a section of the newspaper called “the Lottery.” Meanwhile, Mercy calculates his next attack.

So mesmerizing are Yejidé’s unhurried, lyrical chapters that it’s easy to forget the real conflicts, such as financial crises, racial tensions and substance abuse, looming in the background. This contemporary fairy tale’s grandeur and psychedelic wonderment undergird a serious warning, urging readers to make sense of the story’s message of family, justice, trauma and healing and to find a way toward a saner future.

This contemporary fairy tale’s grandeur and psychedelic wonderment undergird a serious warning, urging readers to find a way toward a saner future.
FictionDystopian Fiction

Body of Stars

Review by Mari Carlson

In the circumscribed dystopia of Laura Maylene Walter’s debut novel, Body of Stars, markings on girls’ bodies tell their futures, but one young woman learns to navigate in a new way—by using herself as constellation.

Celeste’s society operates under the rubric of a book titled Mapping the Future: An Interpretive Guide to Women and Girls, and the novel unfolds between excerpts and illustrations from this official guide. Hiding the markings is against the rules, even though the “changeling” markings on adolescents, before they finalize into adult markings, render the girls vulnerable to abduction. Girls are drugged and raped, and images of their markings are sold on black markets. Afterward, the girls are shunned.

The marks on teenager Celeste’s skin indicate that she will work with her brother, Miles, who has spent his whole life learning to read markings, a career forbidden to him because he’s a man. At first, Celeste is, like most girls, careful to fall in line with the plan laid out for her on her skin. But as she grows up, she questions the guide’s wisdom and wants to keep her markings private. By the time she is a changeling, Celeste commits to addressing the dangerous and too-common threat of abduction. When she receives her adult markings, she learns that her fate aligns with Miles’ in tragedy and hope.

The book’s fantastical premise is just distanced enough from reality to make Celeste’s story a tantalizing escape, and yet close enough that its implications are convincing. The characters are down-to-earth, average people, and both men and women face real gender challenges and work together to overcome them. The book’s palpable anger at injustice is met with love—a fierce, familial and able challenger. This is an exciting debut that fans of Leni Zumas’ Red Clocks will want to check out.

In the circumscribed dystopia of Laura Maylene Walter’s debut novel, Body of Stars, markings on girls’ bodies tell their futures, but one young woman learns to navigate in a new way—by using herself as constellation.

Children's & YAAudio

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Review by Mari Carlson

Alvin Schwartz’s iconic tales from the 1980s and ’90s have an eventful history. They’ve been illustrated and re-illustrated and even adapted to film, and now they’re available as an audiobook for all ages. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Three Books to Chill Your Bones (4 hours) combines all three of Schwartz’s spooky collections (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Scary Stories 3), mixing European folk legends with mysteries, “jump” tales and ghost stories in contemporary settings. Memorable moments include a big toe floating in soup, a pimple infested with spiders and anything in a haunted house. 

Each of the three volumes is read by a comedy or horror actor: Patton Oswalt, Melissa McBride and Alex Brightman. The production is clean and pared down, with no extra sound effects—and we don’t need them, as these stories are still creepy after all these years. All three actors follow Mark Twain’s suggestion for telling scary stories—to speak slowly and in a low voice to draw listeners in—though the actors’ accents and screams add to the entertainment. Tracks run from 30 seconds to 15 minutes, so no fright is too prolonged, and each volume ends with detailed notes and references, perfect for listeners interested in the history of these classic tales.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Three Books to Chill Your Bones (4 hours) combines all three of Schwartz’s spooky collections (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Scary Stories 3), mixing European folk legends with mysteries, “jump” tales and ghost stories in contemporary settings.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Four Winds

Review by Mari Carlson

Like a wise and imaginative teacher, Kristin Hannah imbues past events with relevance and significance in her novel The Four Winds.

In 1921, as a sickly, homebound teen, Elsa dreams big. One night she sneaks away from the protective eyes of her family and thrills at the attention paid to her by Rafe Martinelli, a dashing Italian immigrant. When she becomes pregnant by Rafe, Elsa is disowned by her parents, and Rafe’s family takes in the young couple. Soon Elsa becomes an indispensable member of the Martinelli farm. But when Rafe abandons his family and dust storms begin to ravage the land, Elsa and her children journey to California in search of a better life. What they find is devastation, not of the landscape but of human souls, ground down by mistreatment. Elsa finally realizes her big dream, becoming a warrior matriarch who fights for justice.

The story builds to epic proportions over its four distinct parts. The spare writing in the 1921-set first section imparts the starkness of Elsa’s childhood and the barrenness of the landscape, like a Dorothea Lange photograph come alive. The second part, set in 1934, depicts family tensions as Elsa’s rootedness chafes against Rafe’s desire to leave the floundering farm. Their daughter, Loreda, exacerbates their differences through her tenacious yet rebellious spirit. In the third part, set in 1935, the drama of deprivation gives way to the thrill of the open road on the way to California. Mother-daughter sparring allows their relationship to grow, and they’re supported by fellow women in the migrant camp.

But the greatest adventure awaits in the final part, amid violent protests against cotton growers in 1936. Anger over failed crops, failed marriages and failed dreams finds a worthy outlet in the migrant workers’ collective resistance against injustice. At a migrant worker school in California, feisty and eager 13-year-old Loreda is too preoccupied with the troubles of the present to endure boring history lessons, and it’s not long before she becomes an activist for change, following in her mother’s footsteps.

With biting dialogue that holds nothing back, The Four Winds is classic in its artistry. Overtones of America’s present political struggles echo throughout the novel’s events. These indomitable female characters foreshadow the nation’s sweeping change through their fierce commitment to each other and to a common, timeless goal.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Kristin Hannah shares a look at her book-loving life.

Like a wise and imaginative teacher, Kristin Hannah imbues past events with relevance and significance in her novel The Four Winds.

FictionLiterary Fiction

The Center of Everything

Review by Mari Carlson

A character in Jamie Harrison’s latest literary crime novel observes, “Everyone [has] a core of hell and doubt and sorrow.” But the story’s star, Polly, discovers a brighter perspective.

In 2002, 42-year-old Polly has recovered physically from a recent bike accident, but she still suffers periods of confusion. When Polly’s children’s favorite babysitter, Ariel, goes missing on a kayak trip, the incident triggers a flood of jarring memories in Polly’s fragmented mind. Her “spells” toggle the narrative between July 2002 and the summer of 1968, a structure that suggests cyclical rather than linear time, as she exists fluidly in both eras at once.

Polly spends part of her childhood with her great-grandparents Dee and Papa, whose backgrounds in archeology, myth and art create a chaotic but loving household. Also living with Papa and Dee are Rita, Polly’s parents’ friend whose husband dies in the Vietnam War, and Rita’s son, Edmund. Eight-year-olds Polly and Edmund explore the landscape together, avoiding “the witch” and eavesdropping on adult conversations. This stimulating and permissive upbringing makes for a lively narrative.

Since timelines and events are murky to Polly, sensations dominate the narrative, from the smells and tastes of Dee’s exotic meals to sights from around New York, Michigan and Montana, as well as memories of physical closeness and warmth. The text is idiosyncratic, composed of lists and phrases, a mosaic of impressions from past and present. After Ariel disappears, Polly follows suspicious, incongruous images of sexual predators and water deaths, leading her to a truth that her family is finally ready to face together.

Reading The Center of Everything is like traveling further and further into a dream, spiraling around fragments toward a point of love and wonder. It’s a redemptive and hopeful novel guided by earthy, reliable men, women and children who inspire and encourage.

A character in Jamie Harrison’s latest literary crime novel observes, “Everyone [has] a core of hell and doubt and sorrow.” But the story’s star, Polly, discovers a brighter perspective.

FictionLiterary Fiction

Zero Zone

Review by Mari Carlson

The liminal space between art, artist and audience takes an unexpected, beautiful and haunting form in Scott O’Connor’s masterful Zero Zone, which brings to light the intangible thoughts and feelings swirling around an interactive art installation in the desert.

Jess wasn’t always the artist in her family; her brother, Zack, was. But after their parents’ deaths, their California aunt teaches Jess to use art as a way to navigate and contain her emotions. Jess goes to art school and falls in love with a fellow student, while Zack retreats into an underground film scene. Jess’ art explores light and space, and as she attempts to create an ambiance for her internal struggles, she discovers room to empathize with others’ troubles, too.

Then one of Jess’ installations, titled “Zero Zone,” becomes the setting for a showdown between viewers who refuse to leave. Police are called to the scene. Similar circumstances threaten to repeat themselves two years later, and Jess must decide whether to act as a distant artist or in a new, more involved manner.

The chapters shift like a camera lens focusing for the shot. Early chapters take a panoramic view of Jess’ troubled past. Middle chapters zero in on her artworks and follow the stories of the young people involved in the standoff at Zero Zone. Final chapters click past, rapid-fire, as Jess’ story collides with those of the Zero Zone audience.

Zero Zone celebrates burgeoning female relationships, such as the ones between Jess and her aunt and between the women who see Zero Zone as a haven. In contrast, dangerous relationships with charismatic men tint the story with an eerie hue. An intimate experience of art from the inside out, Zero Zone raises questions about to whom art belongs: its creator or its recipients. Untangling the web of answers makes for a tantalizing inquiry.

The liminal space between art, artist and audience takes an unexpected, beautiful and haunting form in Scott O’Connor’s masterful Zero Zone, which brings to light the intangible thoughts and feelings swirling around an interactive art installation in the desert.
FictionPopular Fiction

The Big Door Prize

Review by Mari Carlson

In The Big Door Prize, a new machine at a small-town Louisiana grocery store adds excitement to bicentennial preparations. After customers submit a mouth swab sample, DNAMIX provides each person with a printout of his or her true potential, or “Life Station.” What’s the worst that could possibly happen? Better yet, what’s the best?

Using John Prine song lyrics as chapter titles, the novel explores idioms, preconceptions and other cultural deposits through the stories of a homemaker, a teacher, a student, a musician and scores of other citizens who try on who they “really” are. Doug and Cherilyn appear to be the ideal couple, but Cherilyn struggles with odd symptoms behind Doug’s back, and Doug’s trombone-playing aspirations get in the way of his history teaching. Jacob’s twin brother, Toby, has recently died, and when Toby’s girlfriend starts giving Jacob undue attention, he begins to question how similar or different he is from his twin. Father Pete, a chaplain at Jacob’s Catholic school, is expected to be a font of wisdom, but he’s mostly interested in listening—really listening. This cast of characters has a chance to be anyone, but can they be themselves?

The promises supplied by DNAMIX parallel the marketing-manufactured allure of online life, but ultimately, The Big Door Prize celebrates unlikely heroes, like Tipsy, the drunkard who takes up driving as a way to abstain, and Doug’s trombone teacher, who brings to mind the famous bassist Victor Wooten in his almost magical pedagogy and thrilling sounds. Over the course of the novel, these characters become genuine role models who contrast with the personalities celebrated by social media.

More than solving societal ills, The Big Door Prize calls attention to the ordinary, hard-won joys of real people. M.O. Walsh’s second novel is a feel-good read in a down-home setting, with serious undertones.

Now a series on Apple TV+, The Big Door Prize calls attention to the ordinary, hard-won joys of real people. M.O. Walsh’s second novel is a feel-good read in a down-home setting, with serious undertones.

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