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Audiobooks

Audiobooks 05/06/21

Hola Audiophiles! I finally got to go back to working in an office with the newly vaccinated Portland crew this week and wow, what a difference it makes to have some company! All praise and honor to science for bringing me back into close contact with these awesome people. It’s so soul-soothing to laugh with and bounce my weirdness off of them instead of sitting around talking to myself all day. Hope your May is off to a good start too!

Ready? Let’s audio.


New Releases – Week of May 4, 2021

publisher descriptions in quotes

audiobook cover image of Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

I have been waiting for this book for months! It’s the first in a new foodie cozy series and it’s by an author of color. To quote the great philosopher Britney Jean Spears, “gimme gimme more, gimme more, gimme gimme more.”

Lila moves back home after an awful breakup who’s then tasked with saving her Tita Rosie’s failing restaurant, and then has to deal with her matchmaking aunties who are equal parts loving an judgy AF. Things get complicated when a notoriously nasty food critic kicks the bucket moments after a confrontation with Lila, especially since said food critic is kind of her ex.

Read by Danice Cabanela, an actress and produce known for Forget Me Nots (2019) and The Debt Collector (2018). Really digging that sample!

audiobook cover image of Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

I forgot Rivers Solomon had another book out this year! Vern is seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the religious compound where she was raised. She flees for the woods and gives birth to twins, planning to raise them far away from the clutches of the outside world. But when she’s hunted by the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes a kind of brutality that she did not know she was capable of, that she shouldn’t be capable of. “To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future – outside the woods.” (fiction)

Read by Karen Chilton (The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr., A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole))

audiobook cover image of Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

Valora Luck has a ticket for the Titanic and big dreams of escaping England to pursue a career as a circus performer in New York, but she’s turned away because Chinese aren’t allowed into America. She simply has to get on board if she’s going to find her twin brother Jamie and audition for an influential circus owner though, both of whom are on the ship. She finds her way on as a stowaway, so she should stay hidden and out of sight. She has only seven days to find her twin brother, perform for that circus owner, and get him to help both her and Jamie into America. (YA historical fiction)

Read by Rebecca Yeo, an actress and producer, known for work such as Six Feet Apart (2021), Dead End – Dead Man Walking (2020)

audiobook cover image of Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

Ariadne, Princess of Crete, grows up in the lap of luxury. But beneath her golden palace lies the threat that is her brother, the Minotaur, the monster who demands blood sacrifice. Then Theseus arrives, and in him Ariadne sees the possibility of escape. She defies the gods in an act of betrayal against her family and country and helps the Prince of Athens slay the Minotaur. But will doing so give her the happy ending she so craves?

Circe lovers: this one’s for us! I am so excited for another exploration of the forgotten women of Greek mythology.

Read by Barrie Kreinik (Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy, Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon)

audiobook cover image of On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

I admit the American education system failed me (and SO many others) in not teaching me about Juneteenth; it’s pretty sad to think that I only came to know about it in my twenties. “Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.” (nonfiction, history)

Read by Karen Chilton, her second appearance on this newsletter!

Latest Listen

audiobook cover image of Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Listen to this one now! Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine is a biracial, unenrolled tribal member with dreams of studying medicine, but those dreams are put on hold when she defers enrollment to stay local and care for her mother and grandmother. Her world is rocked even further when she witnesses the murder of her best friend, a killing followed by a strings of other deaths all linked to a new lethal cocktail of meth. Daunis gets pulled into an undercover criminal investigation into the source of the meth but also pursues her own secret investigation, using her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to get to uncover buried secrets in her community. Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Ojibwe woman and decide far she’s willing to go to protect her community, not to mention how to handle her complicated feelings for the new boy in town who may have something to hide.

Isabella Star LaBlanc is a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota stage and screen actor and her performance of this book is pitch-perfect! It would have been practically criminal to have this narrated by a non-indigeouns person and I’m glad someone had the sense to remember that. LaBlanc not only gives us just proper Anishinaabemowin pronunciations of words, names, and places, but also warm delivery of res slang and colloquialisms. The sense of place and community jumped off the page with her delivery. I hope we get to see more of her audiobook work soon!

If you’re looking to diversify your reading with books by indigenous authors, this is a fantastic, well-paced YA (bordering on New Adult) mystery that asks readers to ponder the importance of tradition and community, the attempted erasure of indigenous culture, and the politics of identity—not to mention how law enforcement ain’t always, shall we say, helpful.

TW: drug abuse, drug overdose, sexual assault (mostly off page, no graphic details)

From the Internets

at Audible: Congratulations! You’re a Grandparent. Now What?

at Audiofile: Audiobooks Celebrating All Things Gardening and 6 Mystery Audiobooks for AAPI Heritage Month

at Geek Tyrant: Dark Horse Graphic and Prose Novels Getting Audio Books with New Deal

at Libro.fm: Quiz: Your Next Audiobook for AAPI Heritage Month

Over at the Riot

7 Fiction Audiobooks for AAPI Heritage Month


Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with with all things audiobook or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the In The Club newsletter and catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa