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Lawrence Ingrassia is intimately familiar with the painful, inevitable question many face after losing multiple loved ones to cancer: Why? In his book, A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery (9.5 hours), Ingrassia explores research on hereditary cancer predisposition and introduces families—including his own—who are grappling with what this research could mean for them.

Narrator Roger Wayne gives this topic the care and honesty it deserves. He lends a friendly, personable tone to Ingrassia’s recollections: Happy memories are read with nostalgic tenderness, while painful moments are treated with solemn respect. Historical sections telling the stories of the doctors, scientists and patients involved in the progress of research emphasize the connection between the scientific and the personal.

Listeners will find A Fatal Inheritance to be an effective overview of research on cancer and hereditary predisposition, one that achieves serious investigation while remaining intensely human.

Read our starred review of the print edition of ‘A Fatal Inheritance.’

Listeners will find A Fatal Inheritance to be an effective overview of research on cancer and hereditary predisposition, one that achieves serious investigation while remaining intensely human.
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Sylvie Cathrall’s debut fantasy, a series opener, offers an aquatic variation on dark academia, unfolding entirely through a series of letters and other documents. Set 1,000 years after a mysterious event called “the Dive” sent almost all of humankind underwater, A Letter to the Luminous Deep (12.5 hours) begins with reclusive E. Cidnosin writing to scholar Henerey Clel about her discovery of an unidentified “elongated fish.” Listeners soon discover, through letters between E.’s sister, Sophy, and Henerey’s brother, Vyerin, that E. and Henerey have disappeared under unexplained circumstances. Part mystery, part slowly building romance, Cathrall’s lyrical fantasy utilizes poignant details and quaint language to conjure an evocative underwater world. The use of different narrators for each letter writer—Claire Morgan, Kit Griffiths, Justin Avoth and Joshua Riley—is an effective way to differentiate the characters, and the novel’s unhurried pacing allows listeners to relish the art of letter writing.

Read our starred review of the print version of A Letter to the Luminous Deep.

Part mystery, part slowly building romance, Sylvie Cathrall's lyrical fantasy, A Letter to the Luminous Deep, utilizes poignant details and quaint language to conjure an evocative underwater world.
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The 15 short tales that make up The Black Girl Survives in This One (10.5 hours) have one thing in common: Their Black girl protagonists make it out of the horror story alive. Beyond that, these terrifying vignettes are anything but predictable, stretching the limits of the horror genre towards sci-fi, gothic, comedy and more.

Author and film historian Tananarive Due reads the anthology’s introduction, situating the book in the history of horror writers’ erasure and stereotyping of Black girls. Narrator Shayna Small reads the stories, honoring each unique atmosphere with different accents and inflections, making every story a distinct experience. Across the collection, her narration has a hushed, mesmerizing tone, luring listeners into each chilling tale.

Fans of horror are sure to enjoy The Black Girl Survives in This One’s array of new, creative takes on the genre.

These terrifying short stories starring Black girl protagonists are anything but predictable, stretching the limits of the horror genre towards sci-fi, gothic, comedy and more.
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Spanish novelist Alana S. Portero debuts with Bad Habit (5.5 hours), a brief but stunning coming-of-age novel set in a working-class neighborhood of Madrid during the 1980s and 1990s. The unnamed narrator describes her early awareness of hostility towards her nascent trans identity, hostility which exponentially compounds other dangers like drugs and poverty that confront all of the neighborhood’s young people: “We grew up like that: generations of working-class kids dreaming up whole worlds in the very same plots that might one day become our final resting places.” Actress Alexandra Grey, who is a trans woman, reads with a smooth and resonant voice that mirrors the lyricism of Portero’s words in Mara Faye Lethem’s English translation. This image-rich, unsentimental portrayal of a vibrant yet vulnerable place will transport readers into a world and a life worth understanding.

Read our starred review of the print version of Bad Habit.

Actress Alexandra Grey resonantly reads Alana S. Portero’s stunning debut, Bad Habit, chronicling a trans girl’s coming of age in 1980s Madrid.
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In The Alternatives (11 hours) by Caoilinn Hughes, geology professor Olwen Flattery, despairing at the state of the world, goes AWOL from her job and her family. Rhona, Maeve and Nell, her brilliant, squabbling and stubborn sisters, track her down to rescue her—which is exactly what Olwen doesn’t want.

The actors in this full cast production do an excellent job of translating The Alternatives into an audiobook. Each sister has a subtly different Irish accent: Rhona’s clipped academic tones, Maeve’s London-tinged lilt, Nell’s American inflection, and Olwen’s rich and loamy voice, as beautiful and weary as the world she mourns. When the novel shifts to a play format in later chapters, the actors revel in the sharp dialogue and insightful stage directions. Teetering between comedy and tragedy, The Alternatives will leave the listener wondering about the fates of these compelling characters.

Read our review of the print version of The Alternatives.

The actors in this full cast production of Caoilinn Hughes’ The Alternatives revel in the sharp dialogue of the brilliant, squabbling and stubborn sisters.
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The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin—dubbed the “Nazi Olympics” for providing an international platform to the genocidal regime—produced lasting memories, including the triumphs of Black American track and field star Jesse Owens and the “Boys in the Boat” rowing team that beat Germany in a dramatic upset. Less remembered is the wide speculation at the games that Helen Stephens, a U.S. runner who won two golds, might actually be a man.

She wasn’t. But the phony controversy was symptomatic of a panic in the Olympics establishment. Not long before the 1936 games, two top track and field athletes who had competed in international competitions as women said publicly that they were men (we would say now that they had come out as trans). A handful of Olympic leaders, including Nazi sympathizers, immediately drew the wrong conclusions and called for mandatory medical exams to determine sex prior to sports competitions.

In The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports, author Michael Waters sensitively tells this forgotten history and reveals its modern resonances. The book connects the struggles of those two athletes, Zdenek Koubek of Czechoslovakia and Mark Weston of Britain, with the relatively open attitude toward queerness in pre-Nazi Central Europe, the resistance within the early Olympics movement to women’s sports, and the failed effort to boycott the Berlin games.

The Other Olympians is full of surprises for contemporary readers. For example, anyone who mistakenly thinks Christine Jorgensen was the first person to have gender affirming surgery will learn very much otherwise. But Waters’ detailed description of the outspoken Koubek’s life before and during his transition is the heart of the book. He emerges as an overlooked pioneer.

Koubek, Weston and other trans and queer people profiled here never wanted to compete against women after their transitions. Yet an entire regimen of sex testing was built on the unfounded belief that men were somehow masquerading as women to participate in sports contests. Decisions made in the late 1930s created sports competition rules that still exist today, as debate over trans athletes rages in school board meetings, courtrooms and legislative sessions. Waters doggedly chronicles where the debate originated and calls for what he believes is overdue change.

The Other Olympians doggedly chronicles the lives of pioneering trans athletes and the historically fraught 1936 Olympic Games.
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Mike De Socio loves the Boy Scouts. In Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts—and America, De Socio, an Eagle Scout, details how Boy Scouts gave him, a nerdy misfit, the space to thrive. He is also queer, coming out while in college in 2015, the same year that the Scouts lifted its ban on gay leaders and two years after it had lifted the ban on gay Scouts. De Socio learned he was not alone: Boy Scouts had provided a safe haven for many other queer Scouts, a haven that was repeatedly taken away because of a policy that they had no idea even existed.

Taking its title from the Boy Scout Oath, Morally Straight weaves detailed journalism and De Socio’s deeply personal memories in its recounting of the effort to lift bans on LGBTQ+ Boy Scouts and their leaders. It starts with the story behind Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, the 2000 Supreme Court case that allowed the Scouts to discriminate against queer boys and men.

At the heart of De Socio’s book is the work of Scouts for Equality (SFE), an activist group formed in 2012 after the Scouts expelled lesbian den leader Jennifer Tyrrell. Headed by Zach Wahls and Jonathan Hillis, two straight Eagle Scouts, SFE evolved into a broad-based alliance of LGBTQ+ and straight Scouts, parents and supporters that eventually persuaded the Scouts to rescind their policies.

Under Wahls and Hillis’ leadership, the SFE became a juggernaut. In their early 20s, both men  were uniquely qualified to take on the BSA. The son of two lesbian mothers, Wahls was already a LGBTQ+ activist and the author of My Two Moms. Hillis was a prominent youth leader at the BSA’s national level. Ironically, both credit the Boy Scouts with developing the moral courage and leadership skills that made SFE possible.

Morally Straight is both clear-eyed and optimistic. BSA is now a broader tent, accepting gay, trans and even female Scouts. But, as De Socio’s own experiences show, it still grapples with how to give its members the space and tools to remain true to who they are.

Morally Straight weaves detailed journalism and author Mike De Socio’s deeply personal memories in its recounting of the effort to lift bans on LGBTQ+ Boy Scouts and their leaders.

As the Texas legislature attempts to ban books; dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion; and threaten LGBTQ+ people with draconian laws, poet and author KB Brookins’ debut memoir, Pretty, arrives when we need it most. Brookins is a Black, queer and trans writer and cultural worker whose previous work includes two poetry collections, Freedom House and How to Identify Yourself With a Wound. Pretty details their experience navigating gender and Black masculinity while growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, exploring how they have moved through a world of cisgender Black and non-Black people, from their biological parents to their adopted family, from classmates to lovers, and from their gender transition through adulthood.

Brookins spent their youth challenging binary spaces and expectations. From early childhood to the present, they have desired to be seen as pretty, and this book is the search to find out what that means for them: “Though not gendered, we often associate prettiness with womanhood, femininity, and objects we see as dainty,” they write. “I’ve never been interested in womanhood, but I’ve always wanted to be treated softly, like a fat pleasantry to the eyes.” Through often striking prose and imagery, Brookins questions the restrictions involved in those associations: “When I was femme, my prettiness was canceled out by Blackness. When I was butch, my prettiness was seen as invalidating my masculinity. Who taught us that masculinity can’t be pretty? Who taught us that Blackness was devoid of prettiness and delicacy?”

While Brookins searches for answers to these questions, they continuously remind us of how hostile the U.S. is to Black and trans people: “As the perception of me changes before my eyes, I realize that it is a specific sadness—embodying patriarchal masculinity in a country that wants your blood more than it wants you to breathe.” We need words and stories like this. By describing their movement through the world, Brookins simultaneously critiques the conditions that oppress Black and racialized people who seek radical self-acceptance, and refuses the state’s malicious attempts to criminalize gender and sexuality.

Pretty offers far more than just pretty words—Brookins tells their side of the story as an act of resistance against those who would silence them. This book is as much a story of self-discovery and survival as it is a love letter to their younger and current self.

As Texas threatens LGBTQ+ people with draconian laws, KB Brookins’ memoir, Pretty, is an act of resistance against those who would silence trans writers.
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A romance is all about the final payoff: After pages of will-they-won’t-they teasing, readers anticipate the moment when everything falls ecstatically into place and our lovers end up together. Kate Young’s Experienced takes this model and twists it, leading readers on a wholehearted, fun exploration of dating and love in the 21st century. After her girlfriend Mei suggests they take a break so the newly-out Bette can casually date and get the full single experience, Bette goes on an awkward odyssey of first dates. Her journey is silly and relatable, and stays away from romance cliches—although that isn’t to say that the book doesn’t end happily.

Bette tries to be chill about the break. After a bit of confusion and hurt, she decides the best course of action is to actually get some dating experience. With her roommate Ash and Ash’s token straight-guy boyfriend Tim, Bette begins crafting her dating app profiles. They choose the best pictures—though Ash and Tim have to convince Bette that she really does look hot in some of them—and write cool, ironic responses to the prompts. Soon after, Bette starts dating a lineup of strange, sexy characters running the gamut of British lesbian baddies. The most memorable is Bette’s first date, Ruth, a PhD student and experienced casual dater who gives Bette the recipe for success and, in a twist of fate, helps her realize what she really wants from a relationship.

Chapter titles that count down to the date when Bette and Mei are supposed to get back together lend Experienced a sense of anxiety and longing that will be all too familiar to 21st century daters. Young’s charming British English pairs with a young millennial’s quirky, anxious interiority for a fun, surprisingly profound read. Romantics, if you’re lonely or even if you’re happily in love, this novel will be a treat. 

Kate Young’s charming British English paired with her young millennial protagonist’s quirky, anxious interiority makes Experienced a fun, surprisingly profound read.
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Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s debut novel is a quiet but profoundly moving coming-of-age story about a young gay man in mid-2000s Nigeria. It’s an at first straightforward novel that deepens as it progresses, building toward an ending befitting its protagonist—a young man continually moving through different versions of himself.

Blessings opens in 2006 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. When Obiefuna’s father catches him in a moment of tenderness with another boy, he immediately sends him away to boarding school. Life at school is strictly regulated and often violent. Older boys abuse and terrorize the younger boys without consequence. Obiefuna, fearing that his sexuality may be discovered at any moment, does what he thinks he has to in order to survive.

Though the novel continues to follow Obiefuna through his early years at university, his time at the boarding school takes up the most space and carries a hefty emotional weight. At times it may feel as if the story drags, but the beautiful and complicated third act reveals that Ibeh knew exactly where he was going all along. He captures the uneven importance of memory and experience, the way certain events can haunt a life without our knowledge. Obiefuna’s relationships to himself, his family, his lovers and his country change dramatically over time, a shift that Ibeh weaves almost invisibly into the prose.

Interspersed between chapters from Obiefuna’s point of view are ones told from his mother Uzoamaka’s perspective. These feel less immediate and vivid, but do add a poignant narrative layer, giving readers a glimpse into what goes unspoken between mother and son.

Blessings is an excellent work of queer fiction, full of characters who are neither good nor bad, but simply human beings in constant flux. Ibeh writes cruelty onto the page alongside tenderness, crafting scenes of domestic gay love with the same attention and detail he gives to scenes of emotional and physical violence. He offers us a precious glimpse of the world as it truly is for so many queer people: not tragic, not perfect, not all suffering or all joy—but worth living in and telling stories about.

Blessings offers a precious glimpse of the world as it truly is for so many queer people: not tragic, not perfect, not all suffering or all joy, but worth living in.
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The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel, is set in 1961 rural Holland. At 30, Isabel is living in the house where she was raised after the death of her father forced the family’s move from the city and into a furnished house their uncle Karel found for them. Isabel lives a circumscribed and watchful life, guarding her dead mother’s things, suspecting the maid of theft and fending off the attentions of a flirtatious neighbor. Of her brothers, Louis and Hendrik, she is closer to Hendrik, although she disapproves of his friend Sebastian, suspecting a deeper connection. Of Louis and the steady stream of girlfriends he introduces to her, she thinks even less. Until Eva.

The siblings meet Eva at a dinner out. With her clumsy manners and brassy dyed hair, she hardly impresses, and Isabel is shocked when Louis brings her to the house, telling Isabel that Eva must stay there while he goes away on business and showing Eva to their mother’s room. Even under Isabel’s watchful eye, things begin to disappear—a spoon, a bowl, a thimble. More alarming to Isabel is the overwhelming attraction she feels to Eva, an attraction that spills into an obsessive, intensely depicted sexual relationship.

Van der Wouden may be familiar as the author of the 2017 essay “On (Not) Reading Anne Frank,” which explored what it means to be a Dutch Jewish writer and her complicated relationship to Frank’s legacy. As Isabel and Eva’s connection unfolds, Van der Wouden’s true subject comes into view: how ordinary people were implicated in the ethnic cleansing that took place during World War II. Even in peacetime, Isabel and her peers are quick to notice people who appear different, with a fierce disgust that Isabel risks turning on herself as she comes to terms with her sexuality. A novel of redemption as much as revenge, The Safekeep has the pacing and twists of a thriller, while delving into the deeper issues laid bare by the Holocaust.

In Yael van der Wouden’s mesmerizing debut, The Safekeep, Isabel lives a circumscribed life in her dead mother’s house until her brother’s girlfriend comes to stay, alarming Isabel when an obsessive attraction develops between the two.

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Much has been written about the recent epidemic of loneliness in America. The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels (9.5 hours), an impeccably researched collaboration by sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans, traces that epidemic to its tragic and perhaps inevitable conclusion, as it follows the stories of four individuals whose bodies are unclaimed and destined for county disposal after their death. Nan McNamara’s direct and compelling narration mirrors the clarity of the text, which combines personal narratives with historical and cultural context, including the not insignificant task of explaining the bureaucratic apparatus surrounding death. Most moving are the stories of people providing ritual and ceremony for those they never knew: abandoned infants, forgotten veterans, the deserted and estranged. The extensive afterword is worth a listen, too, to understand and fully appreciate the complexities of the issue and the work involved in creating this heartbreaking but essential project.

This impeccably researched audiobook, compellingly narrated by Nan McNamara, traces the American epidemic of loneliness to its tragic and perhaps inevitable conclusion in the stories of four individuals whose bodies are unclaimed after their death.
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Grief Is for People (6 hours) is a dual story of loss from the perspective of author and audiobook narrator Sloane Crosley. In 2019, in quick succession, Crosley’s home in New York City was burglarized and her best friend, Russell, whom she had known and worked with for decades, died by suicide. In the months that follow, the two tragedies meld together in Crosley’s mind, and she pursues the recovery of her stolen items with the fervor of someone trying to bring back the dead. Crosley’s narration is frank and articulate, a perfect complement to the wit and candor of her prose. Grief Is for People is Crosley’s personal story of processing, broken into five sections mirroring the five stages of grief. However, this memoir is also an homage to Russell, to his brilliance and nuance, his talent and his legacy and the gaping hole left behind by his death.

Sloane Crosley’s narration is frank and articulate in this memoir of loss, a perfect compliment to the wit and candor of her prose.
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In James (8 hours) Percival Everett retells one of America’s most beloved and most controversial novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the point of view of one of America’s most beloved and most controversial characters, the escaped slave Jim. Everett subverts Twain’s depiction of Jim as the passive witness of Huck’s adventures, and instead reveals Jim, who goes by James, to be the increasingly dynamic subject of his own story.

Voice is crucial to this reenvisioning, as James deliberately changes his diction depending on whether he is speaking to white people, to other enslaved people, or addressing himself. Much of the tension and drama in the story occurs when James slips and his voice accidentally, and dangerously, reveals his true self. Dominic Hoffman’s deft performance of James’s many voices reveals his complexity and humanity with more immediacy and power than simply reading the words on the page could.

Voice is crucial in James, Percival Everett’s retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Dominic Hoffman’s deft performance reveals James’ complexity and humanity with great immediacy and power.
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Award-winning poet Diana Khoi Nguyen traverses deeply personal emotional landscapes in her second collection, Root Fractures. Nguyen’s poems, as the title suggests, trace her family’s fractures, from their origins in Vietnam, to her father’s attempts to resettle and assimilate in California, to her brother’s self-erasure from the family. Movingly read by Nguyen herself, the audiobook offers a close approximation of attending a poetry reading. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of producing this audio version was that Nguyen, who’s also a multimedia artist, often incorporates photographs and unique text treatments in her written work. The audiobook of Root Fractures comes with a PDF of these poems, whose visual forms are also described on the recording. Clever techniques, such as muted sound to approximate grayed-out text or multiple tracks to replicate overlapping text, make the auditory experience a beautiful complement to the visual one.

Read our starred review of the print edition of Root Fractures.

Movingly read by author Diana Khoi Nguyen herself, the audiobook of Root Fractures offers a close approximation of attending a poetry reading.
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Come and Get It (13 hours) follows the colliding stories of students, resident assistants and professors at the University of Arkansas—and it’s full of intrigue, betrayal and a lot of drama. The audiobook is read by Nicole Lewis, who also lent her voice to Kiley Reid’s hard-hitting debut novel Such a Fun Age.

Lewis’ narration drips with nuanced sarcasm. She gives a vibrant voice to Reid’s clever prose and cutting social commentary. Word choice and accents matter in Come and Get It, and Lewis takes full advantage of the audiobook format to give characters their own unique voices, expertly acting out their evasions, backhanded compliments and double-entendres. Listening in feels like hearing a friend share a piece of enthralling, complicated gossip from their undergraduate days.

Darkly funny and provocative, Come and Get It is absolutely absorbing. Listeners will get lost in the story: Reid writes unabashedly about the unique dramas of university life, and Lewis’ dynamic choices as narrator make it difficult to turn the audiobook off.

Read our review of the print edition of Come and Get It.

Darkly funny and provocative, Come and Get It is absolutely absorbing. Kiley Reid writes unabashedly about the unique dramas of university life, and Nicole Lewis’ dynamic choices as narrator make it difficult to turn the audiobook off.
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Interesting Facts About Space (8.5 hours) is a character study of Enid, a 26-year-old woman whose life might be falling apart. We meet Enid when she begins to suspect she has a stalker. As she tries to differentiate between her paranoia and real signs of threat, Enid simultaneously juggles a constellation of self-esteem issues, convoluted family dynamics, a technological bug at work and a confusing dating life. Natalie Naudus lends an articulate, emphatic voice to the first-person narration, impressively capturing Enid’s varied shades of introspection, from reminiscence to anger to rueful comedy. At the center of this novel is the question of what it is to be normal. Is it an inner feeling or dependent on outside perception? Is it an ideal as distant as outer space, or is it actually achievable?

Read our review of the print edition of Interesting Facts About Space.

Natalie Naudus lends an articulate, emphatic voice to 26-year-old Enid, impressively capturing her varied shades of introspection, from reminiscence to anger to rueful comedy.
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Alex Michaelides has crafted a superb psychological thriller in The Fury (8 hours), combining classic whodunit elements with contemporary storytelling techniques. Glamorous American actress Lana Farrar invites a small circle of friends (and frenemies) to her private Greek island for a getaway. This includes playwright and consummate hanger-on Elliot Chase, who narrates the story. After one of their number turns up dead, Elliot reveals ever more secrets and lies—including some of his own. Alex Jennings’ reading, with its measured pace and conversational, almost confessional tone, perfectly captures Elliot’s personality, as well as the varied voices of the small cast of characters. Listeners will be loath to press pause on this entirely unpredictable tale.

Read our review of the print edition of The Fury.

Listeners will be loath to press pause on this entirely unpredictable tale of a Greek island getaway gone wrong.

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