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With over 200 short stories by Anton Chekhov to choose from, translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky did a fine job of selecting 30 stories that represent the major stages of his career to include in Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (20.5 hours). Pevear and Volokhonsky, who also translated War and Peace and Doctor Zhivago, are faithful to the rhythm of Chekhov’s prose, making the stories as pleasurable to hear as to read.

Jim Frangione’s reading is sympathetic to Chekhov’s interest in objective observation. His narrative tone is precise and nonjudgmental, laying out clearly the everyday choices that lead Chekhov’s characters to madness, death or isolation. He convincingly endows each character’s voice with the emotion—fear, lust, boredom—that makes these destructive choices inevitable. “Sleepy,” “Ward No. 6” and “The Fiancée” are particularly good examples of Frangione’s technique of creating audible juxtapositions that reflect Chekhov’s subtle and compassionate view of human folly.

Jim Frangione convincingly endows each of Anton Chekhov’s character’s voices with the emotion—fear, lust, boredom—that makes their destructive choices inevitable.
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Each of the stories in Louise Kennedy’s The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (7.5 hours) is rooted in the traumas faced by women in modern Ireland. With sharp and lucid prose, Kennedy explores the rippling effects of the “troubles,” the corrosive impact of Ireland’s old abortion laws and the consequences of increased crime and drug use. Lives are often blighted, but there is also beauty in Kennedy’s Ireland.

While the collection is set in a definite time and place, Brid Brennan’s excellent performance underscores just how universal these stories are. Brennan, a Tony award-winning actor from Belfast, gives each story the intimacy and intensity of a dark fairy tale. Her reading enhances the profundity and beauty of Kennedy’s work, and affirms how easily someone can teeter into disaster—or into redemption.

Read our review of the print edition of The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac.

Brid Brennan’s reading enhances the profundity and beauty of Louise Kennedy’s stories, and affirms how easily someone can teeter into disaster—or into redemption.
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A fiddle and an apple tree. Tunnels under a prairie, filling with rain. A woman who blurs into a purple finch. Michelle Porter’s A Grandmother Begins the Story (9 hours) is most alluring in its details, as Porter pieces together the stories of five generations of Métis women. Porter creates unique individuals in Carter, Allie, Lucie, Genevieve and Mamé, while situating them in the bittersweet history of the Métis people and their homeland.

This full cast audiobook is an utter delight: lively, gritty and sensitive. Although the rapid switches between points of view can be a little confusing, especially given that there are distinct narrators for not only the women but also the grassland, the buffalo and the dogs, listeners who patiently familiarize themselves with each voice will be rewarded. A Grandmother Begins the Story is a rich study of the ties that bind a family, how they stretch, how they shrink and how they withstand the test of time.

Read our review of the print edition of A Grandmother Begins the Story.

Michelle Porter’s A Grandmother Begins the Story pieces together the stories of five generations of Métis women. This full cast audiobook is an utter delight: lively, gritty and sensitive.

Graham Halstead serves up an atmospheric performance in the audiobook of The Glutton (11 hours), A.K. Blakemore’s mesmerizing novel about a peasant boy with a voracious appetite for just about anything.

Tarare is a sickly man close to death, strapped to his hospital bed and watched over by a nun who is terrified by rumors of the many things he has eaten, which include live animals. Tarare attempts to entice her by telling her the story of his fascinating and sordid life. Halstead’s English and French accents immerse the listener in the French Revolution setting, and the smooth quality of his voice paired with Blakemore’s sumptuous descriptions is hypnotic. Tarare’s account of enduring cruelty and extreme poverty elicits sympathetic horror. And yet, the boldness and richness of Halstead’s narration lends a strange beauty to the story.

Based on the legend of the Glutton of Lyon, this fictionalized tale will be especially enthralling for those interested in the French Revolution and fans of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.

Read our starred review of the print edition of The Glutton.

Graham Halstead’s hypnotic narration lends a strange beauty to this story of a peasant boy’s fascinating and sordid life, eliciting both horror and sympathy.

Leeanna Walsman’s moving performance in the audiobook of Emma Grey’s The Last Love Note (11 hours) conveys the myriad of complex emotions an Australian woman experiences after her husband’s unexpectedly early death. This uplifting story about grief, love and joy after a loss may be especially appealing to fans of Cecelia Ahren and Jojo Moyes.

Two years after her husband’s death from early onset Alzheimer’s disease, Kate Whittaker is still afflicted by confusion and angst as she tries to move on. Walsman’s pitch-perfect narration captures Kate’s fluctuating emotional and mental states throughout an engaging blend of drama and light moments, like when Kate must contend with her guilty attraction to her new neighbor or the bossiness of her micromanaging mother. The sound effect used for telephone conversations and Walsman’s fitting Australian accent add to the dynamic nature of this audio production.

The Last Love Note is an uplifting story about grief, love and joy after death that may be especially appealing to fans of Cecelia Ahren and Jojo Moyes.
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The Wonderful World of James Herriot (12 hours) collects James Herriot’s classic tales into a warm, welcoming audiobook. Based on his work as a veterinarian for farming communities, Herriot’s writing captures a humor and a gentleness that makes for a delightful listen.

While the audio version misses out on the print edition’s illustrations, it gains a comforting resemblance to the experience of hearing bedtime stories read aloud. The introduction is read by Herriot’s daughter, Rosie Page, and the stories by narrators Anna Madeley and Nicholas Ralph, who also star in “All Creatures Great and Small,” the TV show based on Herriot’s work. Madeley and Ralph deliver each character and scene in bright, vivid tones that match the charm of Herriot’s writing.

The Wonderful World of James Herriot gives listeners a peek into Herriot’s life, tracing parallels between his time on rural homesteads and his well-loved tales. This collection invites listeners to sit back, relax and reminisce about more peaceful times.

Read our literary gifts feature on the print edition of The Wonderful World of James Herriot.

This collection of James Herriot’s classic tales invites listeners to sit back, relax and reminisce about more peaceful times.
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Robbie Stephens, Jr. is sent to Gracetown School for Boys after protecting Gloria, his older sister, from a wealthy white boy. At the reformatory, where boys are punished for their “crimes,” students are going missing—and with his ability to see haints, or ghosts, Robbie can uncover the truth behind these disappearances. Dark and terrifying, The Reformatory (21 hours) paints a haunting picture of the Jim Crow South, based partially on author Tananarive Due’s family history.

Joniece Abbott-Pratt gives a multifaceted voice to this audiobook, narrating alternatively with a hushed urgency that adds to the tension and terror of the most gruesome, frightening moments, and a steady, hopeful tone that conveys the Stephenses’ love and perseverance. The Reformatory contains both intensely difficult subject matter and resonant emotional scenes, and Abbott-Pratt’s deft navigation between different moods will keep you listening closely.

Read our starred review of the print edition of The Reformatory.

Dark and terrifying, The Reformatory paints a haunting picture of the Jim Crow South, based partially on author Tananarive Due’s family history.
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Through a dialogue between an unnamed young gay man and an older, dying man named Juan Gay, National Book Award-winner Blackouts (Macmillan Audio, 7 hours) explores the suppression of queer history. Interspersed throughout the book are poems constructed by blacking out words from pages of Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, an actual book by queer sex researcher Jan Gay. Its production, and the eventual removal of Gay’s name from the book, form the basis for much of the story.

The audio version reinforces the book’s unique structure by featuring different voice actors for the two main characters: Torian Brackett as the young man and Ozzie Rodriguez as Juan Gay. Brackett and Rodriguez are convincing narrators, and the end of their story is particularly moving. Author Justin Torres himself reads the erasure poems in a quiet and almost whispery voice, affectingly reminding the listener of the act of redaction that is at the heart of Blackouts.

Read our starred review of the print edition of Blackouts.

Torian Brackett and Ozzie Rodriguez are moving narrators, while author Justin Torres reads the erasure poems interspersed throughout the book, reminding the listener of the redaction of queer history that is at the heart of Blackouts.
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Following Jack and Elizabeth from their meet cute as alt rock-loving college students in 1990s Chicago to their contemplation of a move to the suburbs in the early 21st century, the audiobook of Nathan Hill’s second novel Wellness (19 hours) chronicles not only the couple’s evolving love story but also the ever-shifting wellness culture that forms its partial backdrop. Even though the audio version of this expansive novel stretches to almost 19 hours, Ari Fliakos’s warm, intelligent narration sustains listeners’ interest. Fliakos, who also read Hill’s (even longer) debut, The Nix, excels at differentiating among a dozen or more primary and secondary characters of different genders and ages, making the dialogue sections especially engaging. With wry humor and pathos, this Gen X coming-of-(middle)-age novel makes for a profoundly emotional and humanistic listening experience.

Read our starred review of the print edition of Wellness.

With wry humor and pathos, this coming-of-(middle)-age novel makes for a profoundly emotional and humanistic listening experience.
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The Caretaker (6 hours) is a moving story of love, fidelity and friendship set in the North Carolina mountains during the Korean War. Author Ron Rash draws on Shakespeare: Characters include a philosophical gravedigger, a scheming town leader and his wife, a young man unsure of life’s meaning in the face of death, and, in perhaps the clearest parallel, star-crossed lovers defying their parents. Never heavy-handed, these allusions give the novel a beautiful sense of inevitability without revealing what the ending will be.

Drawing on his Kentucky roots, James Patrick Cronin narrates with an authentic timbre and pace. His low-key performance and sympathetic portrayal of even the most unsympathetic characters allows the listener to hear Rash’s message: Love can both redeem us and cause us to betray those whom we love the most.

James Patrick Cronin’s narration allows the listener to hear author Ron Rash’s message: Love can both redeem us and cause us to betray those whom we love the most.
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Ross Gay’s earlier books, The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy, have established him as a writer of highly crafted essayettes on delight—that most elusive but absolutely essential human emotion. The audiobook of The Book of (More) Delights (7 hours) confirms Gay’s ability to discover delight even when it is hidden in sorrow, anger or tedium.

Gay is an award-winning poet, and consequently he understands the power not only of words and imagery, but of punctuation, structure and, especially, sound. His careful reading gives pauses their due, releases the rhythm and rhyme that prose so often hides, and subtly emphasizes descriptions of a beloved nana, flower or friend. There’s nothing pretentious about his reading; instead, it simply brims with the honest pleasure of acknowledging life’s unexpected joys. And nothing is guaranteed to create more delight in a listener’s day than hearing Gay gleefully repeat the words “vehicular vernacular”!

Ross Gay’s reading brims with the honest pleasure of expressing delight at life’s unexpected joys. Nothing is guaranteed to create more delight in a listener’s day than hearing him gleefully repeat the words “vehicular vernacular”!
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In the male-dominated landscape of wartorn 1963 Saigon, Vietnam, Tricia and Charlene are two American wives striving to be the best possible “helpmeets” to their military husbands: sociable, graceful, obedient, obliging. Through author Alice McDermott’s precise, lingering prose, these women otherwise relegated to the margins bloom with agency and empathy. Charlene’s immense business acumen flares along the line between altruism and absurdity. Tricia struggles to become a mother and to be a good Samaritan, but finds herself held back by the limits of her body and the expectations imposed on a woman of her upper-class status.

Rachel Kenney’s warm, heartfelt narration is a complement to Tricia’s fading naiveté and the strength of her moral compass. Jesse Vilinsky, who voices Charlene’s daughter, Rainey, when she reconnects with Tricia 60 years later, lends a bright, gentle tone to a woman seeking closure. Absolution (10 hours) is not a story about remarkable events, but a story that teases out the remarkableness in everyday people—in neighbors, servants, childhood friends, spouses. It is a breath of fresh air amongst war novels devoted to the machinations of war, speaking instead to war’s ripple effect off the battlefield and years down the line.

Absolution teases out the remarkableness in everyday people, speaking to war’s ripple effect off the battlefield and years down the line.
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A woman seeks refuge in the hot California desert, far away from the pressures of her sick husband and dying father. On a hike, she finds a large cactus with a hole big enough to walk through—which she does, taking her first steps on an adventure of reflection, grief and spirituality. Full of dark humor and self awareness, Death Valley (5 hours) traces one woman’s surreal desert experience as she faces the hard truths she’s been running from.

Author Melissa Broder narrates the audiobook herself, starting the story with a dry tone that matches the protagonist’s straightforward voice. But her inner world runs deep, and Broder captures the subtleties of the character and her changes, embodying both her surface-level distance and her turbulent emotions underneath. In a story that blurs the line between the real and the spiritual, Broder gives a voice to the rawness of being a living, transforming, growing human.

 

Death Valley is a grueling journey, but it’s also sharp and insightful. It does not present easy solutions. Instead, it explores how one woman learns to see herself as part of a larger whole that celebrates pain and pleasure, restraint and intimacy, death and life.

Full of dark humor and self awareness, Death Valley traces one woman’s surreal desert experience as she faces the hard truths she’s been running from.

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